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Detection of Crab radiation with a meteorological balloon borne phoswich detector

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Abstract

We use existing light weight balloon facility of Indian Centre for Space Physics to detect the X-ray radiation from Crab pulsar with a phoswich detector. We present the design considerations and characterization of the detector used for this purpose. We model the background radiation in the detector environment at various altitudes and use this in spectral analysis. The background radiation level and limitations on the detector allowed us to calculate minimum detection limit for extrasolar radiation sources with our set up.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the ICSP balloon team members, namely, Mr. S. Midya, Mr. H. Roy, Mr. R. C. Das and Mr. U. Sardar for their dedications during the crucial mission operations such as launching and recovery. This work been done under partial financial support from the Science and Engineering Research Board (Science and Engineering Research Board, Department of Science and Technology, Government of India) project no. EMR/2016/003870. We also thank Ministry of Earth Sciences (Government of India) for partial financial support. Grant-in-aid from Department of Higher Education, Government of West Bengal is acknowledged by RS, SKC, DB and AB to carry out the research at ICSP.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Indian Centre for Space Physics, 43 Chalantika, Garia Station Rd., Kolkata, 700084, India

    Ritabrata Sarkar, Sandip K. Chakrabarti, Debashis Bhowmick, Arnab Bhattacharya & Abhijit Roy

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  1. Ritabrata Sarkar
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  2. Sandip K. Chakrabarti
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  3. Debashis Bhowmick
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  4. Arnab Bhattacharya
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  5. Abhijit Roy
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Correspondence to Ritabrata Sarkar.

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This work is partially supported by the Science and Engineering Research Board, India grant number EMR/2016/003870

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Sarkar, R., Chakrabarti, S.K., Bhowmick, D. et al. Detection of Crab radiation with a meteorological balloon borne phoswich detector. Exp Astron 47, 345–358 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10686-019-09632-0

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