Preface
Contents
1. The High Energy Window
1.1 Some fundamental concepts
2. Emission processes in Active Galactic Nuclei [Bambi, Grandi, Torresi,…]
2.1 Thermal processes:
2.1.1 Optically thick and geometrically thin disk
2.1.2 Hot corona: x-ray production by Thermal Comptonization
2.1.3 X-ray reprocessing: iron line and Compton hump
2.1.4 ADAF
2.2 Non thermal Processes
2.1 Synchrotron radiation
2.2 Inverse Compton
2.3 SSC
2.4 Hadronic cascade
3. AGN as a high energy laboratory [Grandi, Torresi,…]
3.1 AGN: why do we study them?
3.2 Spectral energy Distribution
3.2.1 Radio quiet AGN
3.2.1.1 Accretion disk and soft excess
3.2.1.2 Iron line and reflection
3.2.1.3 Warm absorber and winds
3.2.2 Radio Loud AGN
3.2.2.1 Core
3.2.2.2 Jets on kpc scales
3.2.2.3 Radio lobes
3.3 Classification of AGN
3.3.1 Optical classification
3.3.2 Radio classification
3.3.3 Doppler Boosting
3.4 Radio Quiet - Radio Loud AGN
3.4.1 Radio Loudness
3.4.2 Tomography of an AGN
3.5 Unification of accreting black holes through all mass scales
4. How to detect X-rays and gamma-rays from space: optics and detectors [Bulgarelli,
Fioretti]
4.1 Matter and radiation interaction
4.1.1 Photoelectric effect
4.1.2 Compton effect
4.1.3 Pair production
4.2 Fundamental Concepts
4.2.1 Quantum efficiency
4.2.2 Effective Area
4.2.3 Energy redistribution
4.2.4 Sensitivity
4.2.5 Spatial Resolution
4.2.6 Angular Resolution
4.3 Detectors
4.3.1 Scintillator (including scintillators for gamma-ray astronomy)
4.3.2 Microchannel Plate
4.3.3 CdTe
4.3.4 CZT
4.3.5 CCD
4.3.6 Spark chambers
4.3.7 Silicon strip detectors
4.3.8 Calorimeters
4.4 Mirror and focussing of photons
4.4.1 Collimated System
4.4.2 Focussing System
4.5 Monte Carlo Simulations of X-ray and Gamma-ray Telescope
4.5.1 Toolkits and frameworks
4.5.2 Space radiation environment
4.5.3 Spacecraft and payload mass modeling
4.5.4 Analysis pipeline for the residual background evaluation
5 Past, present, and future X-ray and gamma-ray missions [Bulgarelli, Guainazzi,
Pollock, …]
5.1 The discovery of astrophysical X-ray sources
5.2 The initial surveys
5.3 The first observatories
5.3.1 Explorer-11
5.3.2 OSO-3
5.3.3 SAS-2
5.3.4 COS-B
5.3.5 Einstein
5.3.6 EXOSAT
5.3.7 CGRO (A general introduction here to provide the big view: more
details in 5.8.2 and 5.9.2)
5.4 Imaging proportional counters
5.4.1 The ROSAT PSPC
5.4.2 The ROSAT All Sky Survey (RASS)
5.4.3 The broad-band perspective
5.4.3.1 BeppoSAX
5.4.3.2 Astrosat
5.4.3.3 HXMT
5.4.4 High-resolution timing
5.5 X-ray CCD astrophysics
5.5.1 Spectroscopic imaging of thermal plasmas
5.5.1.2 SNRs
5.5.1.3 Galaxies
5.5.1.4 Galaxy clusters
5.5.2 Surveys and the XRB
5.5.3 Serendipitous source catalogs
5.5.3.1 The Chandra Source Catalog
5.5.3.2 The XMM-Newton EPIC Source Catalog
5.5.3.3 The XMM-Newton Slew Catalog
5.5.3.4 The Swift XRT catalogs
5.6 The path towards hard X-ray focusing
5.6.1 The BeppoSAX/PDS
5.6.2 Suzaku
5.6.3 NuSTAR: the focusing revolution
5.7 High-resolution spectroscopy
5.7.1 Gratings versus calorimeters
5.7.2 Diagnostics of intergalactic plasmas
5.7.3 Where are the missing baryons?
5.7.4 Accreting black holes
5.8 Compton telescopes
5.8.1 General principles
5.8.2 CGRO/COMPTEL
5.9 Pair-tracking telescopes
5.9.1 General principles
5.9.2 Early phase: SAS-II, COS-B, CGRO/EGRET [spark chamber +
calorimeter + anticoincidence shield: SAS-II (1972, 20 MeV - 300 MeV),
COS-B (1975-82, 30 MeV - 3 GeV), CGRO/EGRET (1991-2000, 20 MeV - 30
GeV)]
5.9.3 - Silicon Trackers: AGILE and Fermi [silicon-strip detectors +
calorimeter + anticoincidence shield: AGILE/GRID (2007-now, 30 MeV - 50
GeV) and Fermi/LAT (2008-now, 30 MeV - 300 GeV)]
5.10 The Future
5.10.1 eRosita
5.10.2 XARM
5.10.3 eXTP
5.10.4 Einstein Probe
5.10.5 Athena
5.10.6 Lynx
5.10.7 X-ray interferometry
5.10.8 eASTROGAM and Compair
6 From raw data to scientific products: images, light curves and spectra [Giommi, Grandi,
Pollock, Torresi]
6.1 How to get raw data
6.1.1 Writing a successful proposal
6.1.2 Exploiting public archives
6.1.3 Open Universe
6.2 Building a clean event file
6.2.1 Data Calibration
6.2.2 Data Screening
6.3 Extracting Scientific Products
6.3.1 Images
6.3.2 Light curves
6.3.3 Spectra
7 Statistics [Pollock, Bulgarelli]
7.1 Basic concepts
7.2 Probability distribution
7.3 Chi2 statistics
7.4 Cash statistics
7.5 F-test
7.6 Likelihood function
7.7 Wilks’s Theorem and Test statistic
7.8 Maximimum likelihood estimation and test statistics for gamma-ray data
analysis
8 Data analysis (tutorials in the appendices) [Guainazzi, Pollock, …]
8.1 Spatial study: exploring a sky image
8.1.1 Is the source there?
8.1.2 Is the source extended?
8.1.3 Multiwavelength approach to identify different x-ray emitting regions
8.2 Temporal Study: bulding a light curve
8.2.1 Checking source flux variations
8.2.2 Variability time scale as measure of the x-ray source extension
8.2.3 Temporal domain analysis
8.2.4 Cross-correlation and time lags
8.3 Spectral analysis
8.3.1 Selection of the source and background regions
8.3.2 Ancillary and response matrices
8.3.3 Model fitting
8.3.4 Parameter uncertainties
8.4 Likelihood analysis for gamma-ray data
8.4.1 Data selection
8.4.2 Model selection
8.4.3 Model fitting
8.4.4 Source detection and localization
8.4.5 Time-series analysis with Likelihood
9. How to put your data analysis and interpretation into a scientific paper
Appendices
A.1 Tutorial guide for X-ray data analysis [Mission(s) TBD]
A.2 Tutorial guide for AGILE
A.3 Tutorial guide for Fermi
