Speaker
Description
Advanced gamma-ray telescopes such as COSI, AMEGO, and eAstroGam measure many more parameters of the observed gamma rays than before, especially in the Compton regime. The measured energies and scatter directions (gamma ray and recoil electron), the detector geometry, the distance between interactions, and multiple Compton interactions all influence the response. For example, a matrix which adequately describes COSI’s response would consist of 11 dimensions at a minimum. This makes full response simulations impossible, especially when considering the high resolution of modern Compton telescopes. Using a simplified binned imaging approach by e.g. reducing the response space to COMPTEL’s original 5 dimensions, would give superior background and flux estimates, but sacrifices sensitivity. On the other side, utilizing a list-mode approach would give superior sensitivity, but the absolute flux and background determination becomes impossible.
In the presentation we will show a way out of this dilemma, by introducing a hybrid imaging approach which combines the background estimation and flux determination capabilities of binned-mode imaging with the excellent sensitivity of list-mode imaging and apply it to COSI.
