Detailed Characterization and Optimization of β-Delayed Proton Detector*

In order to determine the rates of two important reactions for the astrophysical rapid proton (rp) capture process, a segmented, low background β-delayed proton detector has been built at NSCL. Detailed characterizations of the detector’s Micromegas pad plane and gating grid have been performed using measurements with a radioactive ⁵⁵Fe x-ray calibration source and ²²⁰Rn alpha source, respectively. Fitting routines have been developed to extract the energy resolutions from the spectra. Results of detector performance will be presented.