Analysis of the Data from Compton X-ray Polarimeters which Measure the Azimuthal and Polar Scattering Angles

Abstract

X-ray polarimetry has the potential to make key-contributions to our understanding of galactic compact objects like binary black hole systems and neutron stars, and extragalactic objects like active galactic nuclei, blazars, and Gamma Ray Bursts. Furthermore, several particle astrophysics topics can be addressed including uniquely sensitive tests of Lorentz invariance. In the energy range from 10 keV to several MeV, Compton polarimeters achieve the best performance. In this paper we evaluate the benefit that comes from using the azimuthal and polar angles of the Compton scattered photons in the analysis, rather than using the azimuthal scattering angles alone. We study the case of an ideal Compton polarimeter and show that a Maximum Likelihood analysis which uses the two scattering angles lowers the Minimum Detectable Polarization (MDP) by ~20% compared to a standard analysis based on the azimuthal scattering angles alone. The accuracies with which the polarization fraction and the polarization direction can be measured improve by a similar amount. We conclude by discussing potential applications of Maximum Likelihood analysis methods for various polarimeter experiments.

Accepted for publication in Astroparticle Physics (14 pages, 4 figures)

References in corpus (4)

• On understanding the figures of merit for detection and measurement of x-ray polarization
• Scientific Prospects for Hard X-ray Polarimetry
• X-Ray Polarization of Solar Flares Measured with Rhessi
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• Optimization of the Design of the Hard X-ray Polarimeter X-Calibur
• Predicting the X-ray polarization of type-2 Seyfert galaxies
• Observations of a GX 301-2 Apastron Flare with the X-Calibur Hard X-Ray Polarimeter Supported by NICER, the Swift XRT and BAT, and Fermi GBM
• Polarimetric Analysis of the Long Duration Gamma Ray Burst GRB 160530A With the Balloon Borne Compton Spectrometer and Imager
• Maximum Likelihood Compton Polarimetry with the Compton Spectrometer and Imager
• Improved Constraints on Anisotropic Birefringent Lorentz Invariance and CPT Violation from Broadband Optical Polarimetry of High Redshift Galaxies
• Gamma-Ray Polarimetry
• Soft gamma-ray polarimetry with COSI using maximum likelihood analysis
• Compton Telescopes for Gamma-ray Astrophysics
• Compton polarimetry revisited
• Design and tests of the hard X-ray polarimeter X-Calibur