2023/02/08 by Xufang Li, Congzhan Liu, Li, Xu-Fang +22
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced X-ray and CT Imaging #FOS: Physical sciences #Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM) #Nuclear Physics and Applications #Particle Detector Development and Performance
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2302.03859
openalex publication_date 2023/02/08 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Purpose: The High-Energy X-ray telescope (HE), one of the three main payloads of the Insight-HXMT mission, is composed of eighteen NaI(Tl)/CsI(Na) phoswich detectors, where NaI(Tl) serves as the primary detector covering 20--250 keV, and CsI(Na) is used as an active shield detector to suppress the background of NaI(Tl) and also serves as an all-sky gamma-ray burst monitor covering 0.2--3 MeV. In this paper, we review the in-orbit performance of HE in the first 5 years since Insight-HXMT was launched on June 15, 2017. Methods: The major performances we concern include the gain and energy resolution of NaI(Tl) and CsI(Na) detectors, the performance of pulse-shape-discriminator (PSD) and system dead-time. In this work, we investigate these performances mainly using the data of blank-sky observations and the data when the telescope in earth occultation. Results: The overall performance of HE/NaI(Tl) is very stable in the first 5 years, whereas the gain of HE/CsI(Na) shows a continuously increasing trend and should be calibrated regularly. Conclusion: In general, HE is still in good health and well-calibrated status after five-year's operation. The in-orbit performance of HE has no significant deviation from expectation. HE is expected to be in operation healthily for another several years of extended mission life.