Thermal analysis and expected performance of the low energy instrument on board the HXMT satellite

The Low Energy X-ray Instrument (LE) of the Hard X-ray Modulation Telescope (HXMT) uses the Swept Charge Device (SCD) to detect the X-rays in 1-15 keV. The performance of SCD is vulnerable to temperature. We analyzed the thermal condition of LE at different satellite working attitudes with the Finite Element Method (FEM). It is shown that the angle between the sunlight and the normal line of the barrier should be less them 26°, to keep the SCD detectors working in the required temperature range, i.e. -40 ℃ to -80 ℃. We find that the performance of LE is very stable in this temperature range, with a typical energy resolution of 160 eV at 5.9 keV.