Recent Development Status of PoGOLite

The light-weight Polarized Gamma-Ray Observer (PoGOLite) experiment is designed to measure the linear polarization of celestial soft gamma-rays in the 25 keV − 80 keV energy range. Polarized gamma-rays are expected from a wide variety of sources including rotation-powered pulsars, accreting black holes and neutron stars, and jet-dominated active galaxies. Polarization has never been measured at soft gamma-ray energies where non-thermal processes are likely to produce high degrees of polarization. The polarization is derived from the azimuthal distribution of Compton scattering angles in the sensitive volume of the instrument. The scattering angle will be measured by detecting coincident Compton scattering and photoabsorption sites in an array of 217 phoswich detectors. The PoGOLite experiment is being developed by groups in USA, Sweden, France and Japan. We present the status of recent PoGOLite developments, including results from a polarized X-ray beam test performed at the KEK Photon Factory in Feburuary 2008.