Effectiveness of anti-coincidence in electron detectors: Implications for beam-like electron events Original Research Article

Critical to an understanding of the acceleration and propagation of energetic electrons in the heliosphere is an understanding of electron scattering in solid state detector systems. It is well known that there is significant scattering of electrons as they propagate through matter, but precisely how this affects the detection and the interpretation of the incident spectra is a matter that only calibrations and simulations can address. We address the electron scattering problem in an idealized electron detector including a closely spaced anti-coincidence system through an extensive set of Monte Carlo simulations. GEANT4 is selected as the toolkit for these simulations because its effectiveness and accuracy of electron scattering is well documented. The results of these simulations are applied to the onset of near-relativistic beam-like electron events with a variety of energy time-dependent spectral shapes.