Super-AGILE: The X-ray monitor on-board of AGILE

Super-AGILE is the hard X-ray imaging detector of the AGILE gamma-ray mission. It is devoted to monitor X-ray (10–40 keV) sources with an on-axis sensitivity near 5 mCrab in one observing day and to detect X-ray transients in a field of view of 107 deg×68 deg. Super-AGILE is well matched with the Gamma-Ray Imaging Detector (GRID), and potentially provides source arc-minute positioning depending on intensity, spectrum and background conditions. Super-AGILE detects hard X-rays with one additional layer of four Silicon micro-strip detectors, for 1444 cm2 total geometrical area. It will be placed on top of the AGILE Tracker and equipped with a system of four mutually orthogonal one-dimentional coded masks to encode the X-ray sky. Low-noise electronics based on ASICs technology is the front-end read out. We present here the instrumental and astrophysical performance of Super-AGILE as derived by Monte Carlo simulations and experimental tests.