Scientific prospects for hard X-ray polarimetry

Krawczynski, H.; Garson, A.; Guo, Q.; Baring, Matthew G.; Ghosh, Pranab; Beilicke, M.; Lee, K.

doi:10.1016/j.astropartphys.2010.12.001

Cited by 74 publications

(66 citation statements)

References 135 publications

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“…Curvature radiation is polarized, as well. The scientific potentials of spectro-polarimetric observations over the broadest possible energy range are summarized below; more detailed discussions can be found in Krawczynski et al [2011] and Lei et al [1997]. Binary black hole systems.…”

Section: Scientific Potentialmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The azimuthal distribution is resolved by 4 × 8 = 32 pixels for each of the 64 depth bins along the optical axis. Detailed information on the simulations to optimize the X-Calibur design (as presented in this paper) can be found in Krawczynski et al [2011] and Guo et al [2013].…”

Section: Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Various emission mechanisms of compact objects lead to comparable spectral signatures, but would differ in the polarization characteristics. The measurements of polarization properties would therefore help to constrain the geometry of the inner regions of relativistic plasma jets, mass-accreting black holes (BHs) and neutron stars [Lei et al, 1997;Krawczynski et al, 2011].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Design and Performance of the X-ray Polarimeter X-Calibur

Beilicke

Kislat

Zajczyk

et al. 2014

J. Astron. Instrum.

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Received (to be inserted by publisher); Revised (to be inserted by publisher); Accepted (to be inserted by publisher); X-ray polarimetry promises to give qualitatively new information about high-energy astrophysical sources, such as binary black hole systems, micro-quasars, active galactic nuclei, neutron stars, and gamma-ray bursts. We designed, built and tested a X-ray polarimeter, X-Calibur, to be used in the focal plane of the balloon-borne InFOCµS grazing incidence X-ray telescope. X-Calibur combines a low-Z scatterer with a CZT detector assembly to measure the polarization of 20 − 80 keV X-rays making use of the fact that polarized photons scatter preferentially perpendicular to the electric field orientation. X-Calibur achieves a high detection efficiency of 80%. The X-Calibur detector assembly is completed, tested, and fully calibrated. The response to a polarized X-ray beam was measured successfully at the Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source. This paper describes the design, calibration and performance of the X-Calibur polarimeter. In principle, a similar space-borne scattering polarimeter could operate over the broader 2 − 100 keV energy band.

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Section: Scientific Potentialmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Design and Performance of the X-ray Polarimeter X-Calibur

Beilicke

Kislat

Zajczyk

et al. 2014

J. Astron. Instrum.

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“…Focal plane polarimeters based on Compton scattering have been already proposed by Soffitta et al [1], Hayashida [2] and Beilicke et al [3]. Recent works by Krawczynski et al [4] and Chattopadhyay et al [5] evaluated theoretical sensitivities for possible different designs of hard X-ray polarimeters, including focal plane configurations. We complement such studies by measuring experimentally the sensitivity of a focal plane active Compton polarimeter.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Characterization of scatterers for an active focal plane Compton polarimeter

Fabiani

Campana

Costa

et al. 2013

Astroparticle Physics

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In this work we present an active Compton scattering polarimeter as a focal plane instrument able to extend the X-ray polarimetry towards hard X-rays.Other authors have already studied various instrument design by means of Monte Carlo simulations, in this work we will show for the first time the experimental measurements of "tagging efficiency" aimed to evaluate the polarimeter sensitivity as a function of energy. We performed a characterization of different scattering materials by measuring the tagging efficiency that was used as an input to the Monte Carlo simulation. Then we calculated the sensitivity to polarization of a design based on the laboratory set-up. Despite the geometry tested is not optimized for a realistic focal plane instrument, we demonstrated the feasibility of polarimetry with a low energy threshold of 20 keV. Moreover we evaluated a Minimum Detectable Polarization of 10% for a 10 mCrab source in 100 ks between 20 and 80 keV in the focal plane of one multilayer optics module of NuSTAR. The configuration used consisted of a doped p-terphenyl scatterer 3 cm long and 0.7 cm of diameter coupled with a 0.2 cm thick LaBr 3 absorber.

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“…In addition, accreting black hole (BH) systems including BBHs and AGNs are thought to emit linearly polarized X-rays and gamma-rays due to scattering processes in their accretion disks, and therefore the measurement of these polarization properties and energies will enable us to determine the corona geometry, which is too small to be spatially resolved by current imaging observations (Schnittman & Krolik 2010). More examples are discussed in Lei et al (1997), McConnell & Bloser (2006), and Krawczynski et al (2011).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Imaging Polarimeter for a Sub-MeV Gamma-Ray All-sky Survey Using an Electron-tracking Compton Camera

Komura

Takada

Miyamoto

et al. 2017

ApJ

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X-ray and gamma-ray polarimetry is a promising tool to study the geometry and the magnetic configuration of various celestial objects, such as binary black holes or gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). However, statistically significant polarizations have been detected in few of the brightest objects. Even though future polarimeters using X-ray telescopes are expected to observe weak persistent sources, there are no effective approaches to survey transient and serendipitous sources with a wide field of view (FoV).Here we present an electron-tracking Compton camera (ETCC) as a highly-sensitive gamma-ray imaging polarimeter. The ETCC provides powerful background rejection and a high modulation factor over a FoV of up to 2π sr thanks to its excellent imaging based on a well-defined point spread function. Importantly, we demonstrated for the first time the stability of the modulation factor under realistic conditions of off-axis incidence and huge backgrounds using the SPring-8 polarized X-ray beam. The measured modulation factor of the ETCC was 0.65 ± 0.01 at 150 keV for an off-axis incidence with an oblique angle of 30• and was not degraded compared to the 0.58 ± 0.02 at 130 keV for on-axis incidence. These measured results are consistent with the simulation results. Consequently, we found that the satellite-ETCC proposed in Tanimori et al. (2015) would provide all-sky surveys of weak persistent sources of 13 mCrab with 10% polarization for a 10 7 s exposure and over 20 GRBs down to a 6 × 10 −6 erg cm −2 fluence and 10% polarization during a one-year observation.

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Scientific prospects for hard X-ray polarimetry

Cited by 74 publications

References 135 publications

Design and Performance of the X-ray Polarimeter X-Calibur

Design and Performance of the X-ray Polarimeter X-Calibur

Characterization of scatterers for an active focal plane Compton polarimeter

Imaging Polarimeter for a Sub-MeV Gamma-Ray All-sky Survey Using an Electron-tracking Compton Camera

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