Advanced Weights for IXPE Polarization Analysis

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Dinsmore, Jack T., Romani, Roger W.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Dinsmore, Jack T.
Romani, Roger W.
author_facet Dinsmore, Jack T.
Romani, Roger W.
contents As the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) measures increasingly faint sources, the need for precise polarimetry extraction becomes paramount. In addition to previously described neural-net (NN) weights, we introduce here point-spread function weights and particle background weights, which can be critical for faint sources. In some cases these can be augmented by time/phase and energy weights. We provide a publicly available analysis tool to incorporate these new weights, validate our method on simulated data, and test it on archival IXPE observations. Together these weights decrease the area of the polarization uncertainty contour by a factor of two compared to baseline IXPE analysis and will be essential for background-limited IXPE observations.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_07981
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Advanced Weights for IXPE Polarization Analysis
Dinsmore, Jack T.
Romani, Roger W.
High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
As the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) measures increasingly faint sources, the need for precise polarimetry extraction becomes paramount. In addition to previously described neural-net (NN) weights, we introduce here point-spread function weights and particle background weights, which can be critical for faint sources. In some cases these can be augmented by time/phase and energy weights. We provide a publicly available analysis tool to incorporate these new weights, validate our method on simulated data, and test it on archival IXPE observations. Together these weights decrease the area of the polarization uncertainty contour by a factor of two compared to baseline IXPE analysis and will be essential for background-limited IXPE observations.
title Advanced Weights for IXPE Polarization Analysis
topic High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.07981