Correlation methods for the analysis of X-ray polarimetric signals

X-ray polarimetric measurements are based on studying the distribution of the directions of scattered photons or photoelectrons and on the search of a sinusoidal modulation with a period of π. We developed two tools for investigating these angular distributions based on the correlations between counts in phase bins separated by fixed phase distances. In one case we use the correlation between data separated by half of the bin number (one period) which is expected to give a linear pattern. In the other case, the scatter plot obtained by shifting by 1/8 of the bin number (1/4 of period) transforms the sinusoid in a circular pattern whose radius is equal to the amplitude of the modulation. For unpolarized radiation these plots are reduced to a random point distribution centred at the mean count level. This new methods provide direct visual and simple statistical tools for evaluating the quality of polarization measurements and for estimating the polarization parameters. Furthermore they are useful for investigating distortions due to systematic effects.

Volume

885

Start page

7

Uri

http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12386/27547

Url

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168900217314626?via%3Dihub

Issn Identifier

0168-9002

Ads BibCode

2018NIMPA.885....7M

Rights

open.access

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1801.01391.pdf

Description

preprint

Size

1.15 MB

Format

Adobe PDF

Checksum (MD5)

b854165b4e7eddac42e80b3d7ac71063

Name

48_Massaro_et_al_2018.pdf

Description

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Size

1.59 MB

Format

Adobe PDF

Checksum (MD5)

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Correlation methods for the analysis of X-ray polarimetric signals

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