Balloon-Borne Gamma-Ray Polarimeter (PoGO) to Study Black Holes, Pulsars, and AGN Jets: Design and Calibration(SULI)

Polarization measurements at X-ray and gamma-ray energies can provide crucial information on the emission region around massive compact objects such as black holes and neutron stars. The Polarized Gamma-ray Observer (PoGO) is a new balloon-borne instrument designed to measure polarization from such astrophysical objects in the 30-100 keV range, under development by an international collaboration with members from United States, Japan, Sweden and France. The PoGO instrument has been designed by the collaboration and several versions of prototype models have been built at SLAC. The purpose of this experiment is to test the latest prototype model with a radioactive gamma-ray source. For this, we have to polarize gamma-rays in a laboratory environment. Unpolarized gamma-rays from Am241 (59.5 keV) were Compton scattered at around 90 degrees for this purpose. Computer simulation of the scattering process in the setup predicts a 86% polarization. The polarized beam was then used to irradiate the prototype PoGO detector. The data taken in this experiment showed a clear polarization signal, with a measured azimuthal modulation factor of 0.35 {+-} 0.02. The measured modulation is in very close agreement with the value expected from a previous beam test study of a polarized gamma-ray beam at the Argonne National Laboratories Advanced Photon Source. This experiment has demonstrated that the PoGO instrument (or any other polarimeter in the energy range) can be tested in a libratory with a simple setup to a similar accuracy