Capability of the ASTRO-E Hard X-ray Detector for high-energy transients and γ-ray Bursts.

The Hard X-Ray Detector (HXD) is one of the instruments on board ASTRO-E, scheduled for lanch in January–February 2000. The HXD consists of 16 Well-type phoswich counters, surrounded by 20 active shield counters (Anti Coincidence Counters: Anti–Counters). It covers the energy range 10–600 keV with a very low background. Because the Anti–Counters are made of thich high-Z material with a very large geometrical area, they retain a large effective area up to high energies. Therefore the Anti–Counters can be used for monitoring high-energy transient sources and γ-ray bursts. In this paper, the all sky monitoring function with the Anti–Counters and the result of their ground calibration tests are described. © 2000 American Institute of Physics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]