A New Method for Separation of Electrons and Protons in a Space Radiation Field Developed for a Timepix3 Based Radiation Monitor
Abstrakt
A Minimized Radiation Monitor (MIRAM) is developed by the Institute of Experimental and Applied Physics, Czech Technical University (CTU) in Prague and ADVACAM s.r.o.. The device is supposed to monitor the radiation environment of mainly commercial satellites and works autonomously.
It features a Timepix3 pixel detector and four diodes with the power consumption being limited to 1W. A method was developed to measure the radiation level and to give an estimation of the electron and proton fluxes w ithout t he n eed o f a l ot o f p rocessing power.
The average energy per pixel and the number of hit pixels over a few hundred milliseconds are recorded. A simulation showed that the average energy per pixel for a certain mixture of protons and electrons has a nearly constant value with very little variation at sufficiently high amount of hits regardless of the number of hit pixels.
The method was tested on space data from SATRAM, which features a Timepix detector. While lacking the capabilities of its successor, it was shown that the radiation field around the polar regions consist of nearly 100 % of electrons.
The proton content of the South Atlantic Anomaly is about 5 to 20 %, while the electron content is 80 to 95 %.