Development of a Silicon Tracker for the All-sky Medium Energy Gamma-ray Observatory Prototype

Understand

The gamma-ray sky from several hundred keV to $\sim$ a hundred MeV has remained largely unexplored due to the challenging nature of detecting gamma rays in this regime.

• At lower energies, Compton scattering is the dominant interaction process whereas at higher energies pair production dominates, with a crossover at a few MeV.
• Thus, an instrument designed to work in this energy range must be optimized for both Compton and pair-production events.
• AMEGO, the All-sky Medium Energy Gamma-ray Observatory, a Probe-class mission in consideration for the 2020 decadal survey, is designed to operate at energies from $\sim$ 200 keV to $>$ 10 GeV with over an order of magnitude increase in sensitivity and with superior angular and energy resolution compared to previous instruments.