Origin of the in-orbit instrumental background of the Hard X-ray Imager onboard Hitomi

Abstract. Understanding and reducing in-orbit instrumental backgrounds are essential to achieving high sensitivity in hard x-ray astronomical observations. The observational data of the Hard X-ray Imager (HXI) onboard the Hitomi satellite provide useful information on the background components due to its multilayer configuration with different atomic numbers: the HXI consists of a stack of four layers of Si (Z  =  14) detectors and one layer of cadmium telluride (CdTe) (Z  =  48, 52) detector surrounded by well-type Bi4Ge3O12 active shields. Based on the observational data, the backgrounds of the top Si layer, the three underlying Si layers, and the CdTe layer are inferred to be dominated by different components, namely, low-energy electrons, albedo neutrons, and proton-induced radioactivation, respectively. Monte Carlo simulations of the in-orbit background of the HXI reproduce the observed background spectrum of each layer well, thereby quantitatively verifying the above hypothesis. In addition, we suggest the inclusion of an electron shield to reduce the background.