Motohide Kokubun, Kazuo Makishima, Tadayuki Takahashi, Toshio Murakami, Makoto Tashiro, Yasushi Fukazawa, Tuneyoshi Kamae, Greg M. Madejski, Kazuhiro Nakazawa, Kazutaka Yamaoka, Yukikatsu Terada, Daisuke Yonetoku, Shin Watanabe, Toru Tamagawa, Tsunefumi Mizuno, Aya Kubota, Naoki Isobe, Isao Takahashi, Goro Sato, Hiromitsu Takahashi, Soojing Hong, Madoka Kawaharada, Naomi Kawano, Takefumi Mitani, Mio Murashima, Masaya Suzuki, Keiichi Abe, Ryouhei Miyawaki, Masanori Ohno, Takaaki Tanaka, Takayuki Yanagida, Takeshi Itoh, Kousuke Ohnuki, Ken-ichi Tamura, Yasuhiko Endo, Shinya Hirakuri, Tatsuro Hiruta, Takao Kitaguchi, Tetsuichi Kishishita, Satoshi Sugita, Takuya Takahashi, Shin'ichiro Takeda, Teruaki Enoto, Ayumi Hirasawa, Jun'ichiro Katsuta, Satoshi Matsumura, Kaori Onda, Mitsuhiro Sato, Masayoshi Ushio, Shin-nosuke Ishikawa, Koichi Murase, Hirokazu Odaka, Masanobu Suzuki, Yuichi Yaji, Shinya Yamada, Tomonori Yamasaki, Takayuki Yuasa
PUBLICATIONS OF THE ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY OF JAPAN, 59(1 SPEC. ISS.) S53-S76, Jan, 2007 Peer-reviewed
The in-orbit performance and calibration of the Hard X-ray Detector (HXD) on board the X-ray astronomy satellite Suzaku are described. Its basic performances, including a wide energy bandpass of 10-600keV, energy resolutions of similar to 4 keV (FWHM) at 40 keV and similar to 11% at 511 keV, and a high background rejection efficiency, have been confirmed by extensive in-orbit calibrations. The long-term gains of PIN-Si diodes have been stable within 1% for half a year, and those of scintillators have decreased by 5-20%. The residual non-X-ray background of the HXD is the lowest among past non-imaging hard X-ray instruments in energy ranges of 15-70 and 150-500 keV. We provide accurate calibrations of energy responses, angular responses, timing accuracy of the HXD, and relative normalizations to the X-ray CCD cameras using multiple observations of the Crab Nebula.