Likelihood Methods for the Detection and Characterization of Gamma-ray Pulsars with the Fermi Large Area Telescope

Abstract

The sensitivity of the Large Area Telescope (LAT) aboard the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope allows detection of thousands of new gamma-ray sources and detailed characterization of the spectra and variability of bright sources. Unsurprisingly, this increased capability leads to increased complexity in data analysis. Likelihood methods are ideal for connecting models with data, but the computational cost of folding the model input through the multi-scale instrument response function is appreciable. Both interactive analysis and large projects---such as analysis of the full gamma-ray sky---can be prohibitive or impossible, reducing the scope of the science possible with the LAT. To improve on this situation, we have developed pointlike, a software package for fast maximum likelihood analysis of LAT data. It is interactive by design and its rapid evaluation of the likelihood facilitates exploratory and large-scale, all-sky analysis. We detail its implementation and validate its performance on simulated data. We demonstrate its capability for interactive analysis and present several all-sky analyses. These include a search for new gamma-ray sources and the selection of LAT sources with pulsar-like characteristics for targeted radio pulsation searches. We conclude by developing sensitive periodicity tests incorporating spectral information obtained from pointlike.

Ph.D. thesis submitted to the University of Washington, Seattle; advisor Thompson H. Burnett; defended August 16, 2010. 172 pages, 55 figures, 10 tables

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• Constraints on the Galactic Population of TEV Pulsar Wind Nebulae Using Fermi Large Area Telescope Observations
• Discovery of Nine Gamma-Ray Pulsars in Fermi-LAT Data Using a New Blind Search Method
• Five New Millisecond Pulsars From a Radio Survey of 14 Unidentified Fermi-LAT Gamma-ray Sources
• The Vela-X Pulsar Wind Nebula revisited with 4 years of Fermi-Large Area Telescope observations
• Einstein@Home discovers a radio-quiet gamma-ray millisecond pulsar
• Discovery of Gamma-ray Pulsations from the Transitional Redback PSR J1227-4853
• FAST discovery of an extremely radio-faint millisecond pulsar from the Fermi-LAT unassociated source 3FGL J0318.1+0252
• Sub-luminous gamma-Ray pulsars
• Origin of gamma-ray emission in the shell of Cassiopeia A
• Fermi-LAT constraints on the Pulsar Wind Nebula nature of HESS J1857+026
• The missing GeV γ-ray binary: Searching for HESS J0632+057 with Fermi-LAT
• Searching for Overionized Plasma in the Gamma-ray Emitting Supernova Remnant G349.7$+$0.2
• Constraints on the Emission Geometries of Gamma-ray Millisecond Pulsars Observed with the Fermi Large Area Telescope
• Extending the Li&Ma method to include PSF information