High-gain effects minimized at the ends of the anodes in position sensitive gas proportional counters for SSM on ASTROSAT

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The Scanning Sky Monitor (SSM) on ASTROSAT is a position-sensitive gas-filled proportional counter with a wide field of view. The science objective of SSM is to scan the sky to detect and locate transient X-ray sources in the outburst phase. The energy range of operation of SSM is 2.5 to 10 keV. Gas-filled proportional counters are known to have distorted electric fields at the ends of the anodes inside the detector. The electric field and hence the gas gain is different at the ends of the anodes compared to that of the central region. In SSM, the ends of the anode wires were found to have high electric field values and hence high gas gain initially. These effects had to be minimized as they would result in huge charge collection for incidence of highly energetic photons and charged particles, leading to probable discharge effects which would limit the life time of the detector. They also result in undesirable signals, the amplitude of which may not be proportional to the energy of the incident photon. In this paper, we discuss the technique which we use to reduce the field at the ends of the anodes in SSM detectors.