New readout and data-acquisition system in an electron-tracking Compton
  camera for MeV gamma-ray astronomy (SMILE-II)
  For MeV gamma-ray astronomy, we have developed an electron-tracking Compton
camera (ETCC) as a MeV gamma-ray telescope capable of rejecting the radiation
background and attaining the high sensitivity of near 1 mCrab in space. Our
ETCC comprises a gaseous time-projection chamber (TPC) with a micro pattern gas
detector for tracking recoil electrons and a position-sensitive scintillation
camera for detecting scattered gamma rays. After the success of a first balloon
experiment in 2006 with a small ETCC (using a 10$\times$10$\times$15 cm$^3$
TPC) for measuring diffuse cosmic and atmospheric sub-MeV gamma rays (Sub-MeV
gamma-ray Imaging Loaded-on-balloon Experiment I; SMILE-I), a (30 cm)$^{3}$
medium-sized ETCC was developed to measure MeV gamma-ray spectra from celestial
sources, such as the Crab Nebula, with single-day balloon flights (SMILE-II).
To achieve this goal, a 100-times-larger detection area compared with that of
SMILE-I is required without changing the weight or power consumption of the
detector system. In addition, the event rate is also expected to dramatically
increase during observation. Here, we describe both the concept and the
performance of the new data-acquisition system with this (30 cm)$^{3}$ ETCC to
manage 100 times more data while satisfying the severe restrictions regarding
the weight and power consumption imposed by a balloon-borne observation. In
particular, to improve the detection efficiency of the fine tracks in the TPC
from $\sim$10\% to $\sim$100\%, we introduce a new data-handling algorithm in
the TPC. Therefore, for efficient management of such large amounts of data, we
developed a data-acquisition system with parallel data flow.
