Prof. Thomas Shutt
SLAC
GammaTPC: a novel next generation Compton telescope
I will talk about GammaTPC, a new instrument concept for measuring astrophysical gamma rays in the MeV energy range. This part of the sky is a largely unexplored mostly due to the difficulty of measuring MeV photons, but the potential payoff is large, particularly in the upcoming era of multi-messenger transient astrophysics. GammaTPC attacks this difficulty using liquid argon time projection chamber (TPC) technology, which appears to have important advantages over several other techniques that are being pursued. A core part GammaTPC is GAMPix, a new charge readout scheme that enables fine grained readout over large area at very low power, and has other potential applications including neutrino physics. There are a few other amusing challenges to fielding a liquid noble TPC in low Earth orbit.