Bremsstrahlung effects in energetic particle detectors

Abstract

The energetic charged particles of the Earth's magnetosphere are routinely detected by solid‐state satellite instruments. Quantitative data are increasingly required for engineering dose calculations and for space weather science. However, the design of some energetic particle detectors can be severely constrained. Background effects must be accurately modeled in such cases to extract quantitative information. In particular, bremsstrahlung radiation from electrons impacting the detector and the satellite often dominates the background noise. Numerical tools are presented here to calculate total bremsstrahlung effects in energetic electron detectors. The calculations are illustrated for the low‐energy particle detector of current Global Positioning System satellites.