The 511-CAM Mission: A Pointed 511 keV Gamma-Ray Telescope with a Focal Plane Detector Made of Stacked Transition Edge Sensor Microcalorimeter Arrays
astro-ph.IM
/ Authors
Farzane Shirazi, Md. Arman Hossen, Daniel Becker, Daniel Schmidt, Daniel Swetz, Douglas Bennett, Dana Braun, Ephraim Gau, Fabian Kislat, Johnathon Gard
and 11 more authors
John Mates, Joel Weber, Nicole Rodriguez Cavero, Sohee Chun, Lindsey Lisalda, Andrew West, Bhupal Dev, Francesc Ferrer, Richard Bose, Joel Ullom, Henric Krawczynski
/ Abstract
The 511 keV gamma-ray emission from the galactic center region may fully or partially originate from the annihilation of positrons from dark matter particles with electrons from the interstellar medium. Alternatively, the positrons could be created by astrophysical sources, involving exclusively standard model physics. We describe here a new concept for a 511 keV mission called 511-CAM (511 keV gamma-ray CAmera using Micro-calorimeters) that combines focusing gamma-ray optics with a stack of Transition Edge Sensor (TES) microcalorimeter arrays in the focal plane. The 511-CAM detector assembly has a projected 511 keV energy resolution of 390 eV Full Width Half Maximum (FWHM) or better, and improves by a factor of at least 11 on the performance of state-of-the-art Ge-based Compton telescopes. Combining this unprecedented energy resolution with sub-arcmin angular resolutions afforded by Laue lens or channeling optics could make substantial contributions to identifying the origin of the 511 keV emission by discovering and characterizing point sources and measuring line-of-sight velocities of the emitting plasmas.