MeV Astrophysical Spectroscopic Surveyor (MASS): A Compton Telescope Mission Concept

Jiahuan Zhu; Xutao Zheng; Hua Feng; Ming Zeng; Chien-You Huang; Jr-Yue Hsiang; Hsiang-Kuang Chang; Hong Li; Hao Chang; Xiaofan Pan; Ge Ma; Qiong Wu; Yulan Li; Xuening Bai; Mingyu Ge; Long Ji; Jian Li; Yangping Shen; Wei Wang; Xilu Wang; Binbin Zhang; Jin Zhang

arXiv · 2312.11900

MeV Astrophysical Spectroscopic Surveyor (MASS): A Compton Telescope Mission Concept

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Abstract

We propose a future mission concept, the MeV Astrophysical Spectroscopic Surveyor (MASS), which is a large area Compton telescope using 3D position sensitive cadmium zinc telluride (CZT) detectors optimized for emission line detection. The payload consists of two layers of CZT detectors in a misaligned chessboard layout, with a total geometric area of 4096 cm$^2$ for on-axis observations. The detectors can be operated at room-temperature with an energy resolution of 0.6\% at 0.662 MeV. The in-orbit background is estimated with a mass model. At energies around 1 MeV, a line sensitivity of about $10^{-5}$ photons cm$^{-2}$ s$^{-1}$ can be obtained with a 1 Ms observation. The main science objectives of MASS include nucleosynthesis in astrophysics and high energy astrophysics related to compact objects and transient sources. The payload CZT detectors weigh roughly 40 kg, suggesting that it can be integrated into a micro- or mini-satellite. We have constructed a pathfinder, named as MASS-Cube, to have a direct test of the technique with 4 detector units in space in the near future.

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Jiahuan Zhu, Xutao Zheng, Hua Feng, Ming Zeng, Chien-You Huang, Jr-Yue Hsiang, Hsiang-Kuang Chang, Hong Li, Hao Chang, Xiaofan Pan, Ge Ma, Qiong Wu, Yulan Li, Xuening Bai, Mingyu Ge, Long Ji, Jian Li, Yangping Shen, Wei Wang, Xilu Wang, Binbin Zhang, Jin Zhang. 2023-12-19. MeV Astrophysical Spectroscopic Surveyor (MASS): A Compton Telescope Mission Concept. https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.11900

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