Optical optimization for anti-coincidence detectors of a Hard X-ray Modulation Telescope

Abstract The anti- coincidencedetectors of Hard X-rayModulation Telescope (HXMT) are designed to suppress the X-ray backgroundinduced by incident charged cosmic-ray particles. The main components of anti- coincidencedetectors are thin flat plastic scintillators. In this work we apply the TracePro program to study the light transfer features in the scintillators, and we propose several optimized reflector configurations to significantly improve the light transfer efficiency. The simulation results are verified by measurements of the detector prototypes. We chose a particular optimized reflector configuration.