Long Term Testing of the Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST) Detectors Kamal Prasad

Acknowledgements:  Professor Robert Johnson  Gwelen Paliaga  Bill Rowe  Alec Webster  Aurore Simonnet (illustrations)

 Black Holes  Active Galactic Nuclei  Pulsars  Supernova Remnants  Gamma-ray Bursts… GLAST will look at…

 continue where EGRET left off  be 30 times more sensitive  observe gamma-ray sources in the.01 to 300 GeV Range  rely on direct interaction with gamma-ray products  use Silicon Strip Detectors (SSDs) GLAST will…

Case for SSDs  relatively low voltage operation  high signal-to-noise ratio  reliability and robustness  precision tracking  low cost

Long Term Testing  Apply constant voltage to sample detectors and observe functionality over time  Study operation of detectors in presence of construction material e.g. different epoxies  Observe salt contaminated detectors This ensures the assembly, storage and functionality of detectors as the launch date approaches.

Experimental Setup

Light tight box

Vector board

LABView Program …..

FORTRAN program to compile and analyze data …..

Normalizing the current divide and rearrange A =.0883

So far…  experimental setup is over (just add detectors)  data acquisition and compilation is completed  sample data has been analyzed and everything looks good Tests will run until 2003