Monitoring Gamma Ray Bursts with the Zir\`e instrument onboard the NUSES space mission

Abstract

The Zir\`e experiment onboard NUSES space mission has several science goals, including the measurements of charged particles and light nuclei from few up to hundreds of MeVs, for the study of low-energy cosmic rays, space weather phenomena, and possible magnetosphere-lithosphere-ionosphere coupling signals. Furthermore, the experiment intends to test new tools for the detection of photons in the energy range of about 0.03-50 MeV, allowing the investigation of transient phenomena like gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). A high-density segmented calorimeter exploiting novel scintillator crystals and silicon photomultiplier technology for the readout system will serve this purpose along its main task of calorimetric energy measurement of the cosmic-ray charged particles. In this work, we discuss the functionality of the calorimeter as a GRB monitor through the calculation of its performance in terms of effective area, sensitivity, and timing response for the transient outbursts.