WPOL, a DSSD-based hard X-ray wide field imager and polarimeter

WPOL (Wide field camera with Polarimetry) is a wide field camera which aims to monitor the X-ray/low gamma-ray sources and measures their polarimetric properties. This camera will be operated in space to trigger a main instrument in case of transient events (gamma-ray bursts, black hole binaries state transition, supernovae,..) and to map the Xray/ gamma-ray polarized sources of the Galaxy, which has never been done up to now. It will be proposed, as an accompanying instrument, in the context of the next medium mission ESA call (M4). The concept of the instrument is based upon a coded mask imaging with a detector unit composed of two planes of Silicon double sided stripped detectors (DSSD), a passive collimator and a tungsten mask. Mapping is done on the first plane through mask imaging and polarization is measured by studying Compton scattering events between the two planes. The source direction in the sky being known through the mask pattern projected on the detector plane, and the scattered photon direction being measured between the two planes, only the determination of the first energy deposit is needed to compute the whole Compton scattering kinetics and in particular, to determine the source photon energy. (authors)