Session

Weekend Poster Session 1

Location

Utah State University, Logan, UT

Abstract

On 17 August 2017, the LIGO/Virgo collaboration detected a signal of gravitational waves, named GW170817, associated with the merger of two neutron stars. This event was the first detection of the electromagnetic counterpart of gravitational wave events. In general, the error image region of the gravitational wave detectors ranges from a few square degrees to several hundred square degrees. To search for the origin of the gravitational waves or the energetic explosions such as the gamma-ray burst, X-ray observation covering a wide field of view with a good sensitivity is essential to achieve the goal. One of the good candidate instruments to achieve our goal is the combination of an X-ray optics called Lobster-eye optics (LEO) and a large area Si pixel imaging sensor. Furthermore, thanks to the light weight of LEO, it is possible to install on a small platform such as a CubeSat. Here, we introduce a future 3U CubeSat mission for searching the electromagnetic counterpart of gravitational waves in the soft X-ray band (0.4 ~ 10 keV) with ~arcmin localization accuracy. The pnCCD detector fabricated by PNSensor Inc. can achieve our mission requirements as an X-ray detector. To operate the pnCCD detector, we developed an FPGA-based fast readout system which is a very compact design to install on the CubeSat mission.Also, we investigate the readout noise of CAMEX, which is the readout ASIC of pnCCD. As a result, the readout noise was ~ 7.4 e-. In this paper, we report the performance of pnCCD applying our compact FPGA-based data processing system.

Share

COinS
 
Aug 5th, 10:15 AM

The Performance Test of pnCCD with FPGA-Based Operating System for a CubeSat Mission

Utah State University, Logan, UT

On 17 August 2017, the LIGO/Virgo collaboration detected a signal of gravitational waves, named GW170817, associated with the merger of two neutron stars. This event was the first detection of the electromagnetic counterpart of gravitational wave events. In general, the error image region of the gravitational wave detectors ranges from a few square degrees to several hundred square degrees. To search for the origin of the gravitational waves or the energetic explosions such as the gamma-ray burst, X-ray observation covering a wide field of view with a good sensitivity is essential to achieve the goal. One of the good candidate instruments to achieve our goal is the combination of an X-ray optics called Lobster-eye optics (LEO) and a large area Si pixel imaging sensor. Furthermore, thanks to the light weight of LEO, it is possible to install on a small platform such as a CubeSat. Here, we introduce a future 3U CubeSat mission for searching the electromagnetic counterpart of gravitational waves in the soft X-ray band (0.4 ~ 10 keV) with ~arcmin localization accuracy. The pnCCD detector fabricated by PNSensor Inc. can achieve our mission requirements as an X-ray detector. To operate the pnCCD detector, we developed an FPGA-based fast readout system which is a very compact design to install on the CubeSat mission.Also, we investigate the readout noise of CAMEX, which is the readout ASIC of pnCCD. As a result, the readout noise was ~ 7.4 e-. In this paper, we report the performance of pnCCD applying our compact FPGA-based data processing system.