Reducing the Athena WFI charged particle background: Results from Geant4 simulations

Kavli Affiliate: Marshall W. Bautz

| First 5 Authors: Catherine E. Grant, Eric D. Miller, Marshall W. Bautz, Tanja Eraerds, Silvano Molendi

| Summary:

One of the science goals of the Wide Field Imager (WFI) on ESA’s Athena X-ray
observatory is to map hot gas structures in the universe, such as clusters and
groups of galaxies and the intergalactic medium. These deep observations of
faint diffuse sources require low background and the best possible knowledge of
that background. The WFI Background Working Group is approaching this problem
from a variety of directions. Here we present analysis of Geant4 simulations of
cosmic ray particles interacting with the structures aboard Athena, producing
signal in the WFI. We search for phenomenological correlations between these
particle tracks and detected events that would otherwise be categorized as
X-rays, and explore ways to exploit these correlations to flag or reject such
events in ground processing. In addition to reducing the Athena WFI
instrumental background, these results are applicable to understanding the
particle component in any silicon-based X-ray detector in space.

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