Evaluating the capability of detecting recoil-electron tracks using an electron-tracking Compton camera with a silicon-on-insulator pixel sensor

Sub-MeV gamma-ray line observations are crucial for the understanding of high-energy astrophysical processes. In this energy range, the presence of a significant amount of background poses a serious problem. Therefore, it is essential to reduce this background to achieve high-sensitivity observations. An electron-tracking Compton camera can efficiently mitigate the impact of background on scientific results thanks to its ability to fully resolve the Compton process. In addition if we utilize a semiconductor detector as the sensor, the electrontracking Compton camera can achieve high-energy resolution for the detection of gamma-ray lines. To operate the electron-tracking Compton camera effectively, the sensor needs to coincidence events for each detection signal and resolve the complex structure of recoiled-electron tracks of a few hundred mu m. We focused on the silicon-on-insulator pixel sensor XRPIX2b developed for X-ray observations, which satisfies requirements. We developed a prototype electron-tracking Compton camera using XRPIX2b and carried out a quantitative evaluation of its detection capability for estimating the recoil directions of electrons at various angles. As a result, we successfully detected short recoil-electron tracks with a length of 100 mu m corresponded to scattering angles of 30-40 for 511 keV gamma rays entering the sensor. In term of angular resolution measure and scatter plane deviation of a reconstructed image, the evaluations showed results of 15 and 40 (full width at half maximum), respectively, in cases where 511 keV gamma rays were scattered at 90 and recoil electrons tracked the surface of the sensor detection plane. We confirmed that these results were consistent with simulation results, within approximately a 15% margin.