A thick CdTe position sensitive spectrometer for a wide-field telescope for hard X and soft gamma ray astronomy

Results from current space instrumentation have confirmed that the energy band between 10 keV and a few MeV is a very important astrophysical region. This is due mostly to the variety of emitting objects with different spatial distributions and variability time scales and, in particular, to the number of transient phenomena (e.g. gamma ray bursts) whose nature is still. Very unclear. In order to fulfil the observational requirements in this energy range (fine spectroscopy together with high angular resolution imaging over a wide-field of view) and taking into account the opportunities given by small/medium size missions, we have proposed to construct a compact wide-field telescope based on a thick (10 mm) CdTe position sensitive spectrometer. Herein we describe the detector concept, that consists of an array of CdTe crystals and is constructed by the replication of a basic linear module of 32 CdTe 2/spl times/2/spl times/10 mm micro-detectors with integrated front end electronics, as well as the functionality of the integrated front-end electronics that we are developing. Furthermore, we give an evaluation of the performance achievable with such a position sensitive spectrometer in term of spatial resolution, polarimetric capabilities and sensitivity.