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Abstract:
The ComPol mission aims to send a Cube Satellite Compton telescope into the low earth orbit in order to investigate the black hole binary Cygnus X-1. Its task is to gain more insights into its geometry, and the underlying processes via the thereby generated X-rays. These high-energy photons are Compton scattered in the Silicon Drift Detector and subsequently absorbed in the calorimeter of the ComPol CubeSat. By using the kinematics of the Compton scattering, information about the energy and the degree of polarization of the X-rays can be obtained and the processes that probably lead to their formation can be determined more precisely. During its time in orbit, the CubeSat will be exposed to background particles from cosmic radiation and the South Atlantic Anomaly. Both background sources contribute to a different extent to the overall telescope background via direct interactions in the detector system and a time-delayed contribution due to cosmogenic activation. The core challenge of the ComPol mission is the strict size and mass limitation of the overall setup, which means that the shielding has to be carefully designed to match these requirements and simultaneously reach the maximum background suppression. The goal of this thesis is to better understand the background contributions and all its components and to conduct a first study on the impact of the shielding geometry and material. The studies are carried out using the Monte Carlo simulation toolkit Geant4. The simulations give an estimation of the background rate induced by activation due to the South Atlantic Anomaly revealing its significant contribution to the total telescope back- ground. Furthermore, the geometrical arrangement of the shielding can be improved compared to the preliminary geometry. By comparing different shielding materials with each other, a strong correlation between the photon absorption coefficient and the shielding efficiency is found.
