Development of a new hard x-ray polarimeter

We designed a new type of polarimeter for polarized hard x rays from stellar objects, utilizing the principle that the direction of the Compton scattered x rays depends on the electric vector of the polarized incident x rays. The characteristics of the new designed polarimeter were investigated by measurements of basic data and computer simulations. From them, it is shown that the polarimeter is capable of observing the interesting astrophysical objects by using a balloon or a satellite. In this paper, we report the characteristics and the expected performance of the new designed hard x-ray polarimeter.