Simulation of a fine grained GEM used in the PixiE Experiment

Abstract

We have simulated the performances of a GEM with a large density of multiplication holes. In particular in this note we fully simulate the GEM detector used in the PixiE experiment. The detector will be employed in the measurement of the polarization of X-rays produced by astrophysical sources and its optimization is critical. In particular we have studied the gain of the GEM and the diffusion of the charge inside the detector for different configurations of electric fields and for different gas mixtures. This study has been performed to finalize the design of the PixiE Imager Detector.