# 1 The AGILE detector

## 1 The AGILE detector

The AGILE design is derived from a refined study of the GILDA project (Barbiellini et al. 1995, Morselli et al. 1995) that was based on the techniques developed for the Wizard silicon calorimeter, already successful flown in balloon experiments (Golden et al. 1990). Like previous orbiting high-energy gamma-ray telescopes, AGILE relies on the unambiguous identification of the incident gamma-rays by recording the characteristic track signature of the e<sup>+</sup> \- e<sup>-</sup> that result from pair creation from the incident photons in thin layers of converter material. The trajectories of the pairs, recorded and measured in the tracking section of the detector, give the information on the direction of the incident gamma-rays. A light calorimeter made of 1.5 radiation lengths (X<sub>0</sub>) of cesium iodide (CsI) allows to determine the energy of the incident photons. The detector has a height of $``$35 cm, with a $`40\times 40`$ cm<sup>2</sup> area and a total conversion length, for electromagnetic cascades, of $``$2.3 X<sub>0</sub>. A schematic view of the AGILE detector is presented in Tavani et al. (1998). The three AGILE components are: i) a tracker: this is the conversion zone. It consists of 12 planes of single sided silicon strips with 204 $`\mu `$m pitch (distance between strips). The strips are implanted on pads of $`8\times 8`$ cm<sup>2</sup>. Each pad has a thickness of 380 $`\mu `$m and carries 384 strips. The first ten planes consist of two layers of silicon detectors, with orthogonal strips interspersed with a layer of 0.07 X<sub>0</sub> of tungsten. The last two planes have no tungsten sheets. Each plane reads 3840 strips and the entire tracker consists of 46080 strips. The distance between consecutive planes is 1.6 cm; ii) a light calorimeter: it is made of 1.5 X<sub>0</sub> of CsI and will provide an indication of the photon energy; iii) an anticoincidence system: it consists of 0.5 cm thick plastic scintillator layers surrounding the top and four lateral sides of the silicon tracker. It will be able to significantly reduce the background due to charged particles.

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($``$) Adapted from a paper presented at the Conference Dal nano- al Tera-eV: tutti i colori degli AGN, Rome 18-21 May 1998, to be published by the Memorie della Societa’ Astronomica Italiana.

The expected performance of AGILE in angular and energy resolution, as derived from Montecarlo simulations, are shown in Fig. 1. The reliability of the Montecarlo simulations, based on the GEANT code, has been checked with experimental data obtained during tests performed at CERN (Bocciolini et al. 1993). 

Despite its smaller area and weight, the AGILE instrument is able to reach performances comparable to those of the EGRET experiment on CGRO. The main characteristics that make this telescope more efficient are: i) the use of silicon strips instead of a spark chamber as the main device for reconstructing the gamma-ray trajectories; this also avoids the problems of gas refilling, high voltages and dead time (silicon strips have lower dead time than gas detectors) and allows to reach a spatial resolution of two hundred microns, instead of a few millimeters. ii) the elimination of the anticoincidence counters for the high energy trigger, so that an efficiency of 50% up to 50 GeV can be reached; iii) the elimination of Time of Flight, resulting in an increase of the field of view and a decrease of the lower energy threshold ($``$20 MeV for AGILE vs. 35 MeV for EGRET). The impact of theese performances on the study of the AGN’s is described in Mereghetti et al. (1998).