Development of double-sided silicon strip detectors (DSSD) for a Compton telescope

Abstract

The low noise double-sided silicon strip detector (DSSD) technology is used to construct a next generation Compton telescope which is required to have both high-energy resolution and high-Compton reconstruction efficiency. In this paper, we present the result of a newly designed stacked DSSD module with high-energy resolution in highly packed mechanical structure. The system is designed to obtain good P-side and N-side noise performance by means of DC-coupled read-out. Since there are no decoupling capacitors in front-end electronics before the read-out ASICs, a high density stacked module with a pitch of 2 mm can be constructed. By using a prototype with four-layer of DSSDs with an area of 2.56 cm × 2.56 cm , we have succeeded to operate the system. The energy resolution at 59.5 keV is measured to be 1.6 keV (FWHM) for the P-side and 2.8 keV (FWHM) for the N-side, respectively. In addition to the DSSD used in the prototype, a 4 cm wide DSSD with a thickness of 300 μ m is also developed. With this device, an energy resolution of 1.5 keV (FWHM) was obtained. A method to model the detector energy response to properly handle split events is also discussed.