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Development of a General-Purpose Sky Simulator for Low Earth Orbit

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Development of a General-Purpose Sky Simulator for Low Earth Orbit Development of a general-purpose sky simulator for Low Earth Orbit wide-field X/gamma-ray instruments and its application to the assessment of SVOM/ECLAIRs trigger performance Sujay Mate To cite this version: Sujay Mate. Development of a general-purpose sky simulator for Low Earth Orbit wide-field X/gamma-ray instruments and its application to the assessment of SVOM/ECLAIRs trigger per- formance. Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysic [astro-ph.IM]. Université Paul Sabatier - Toulouse III, 2021. English. NNT : 2021TOU30031. tel-03324638 HAL Id: tel-03324638 https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-03324638 Submitted on 23 Aug 2021 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. THTHESEESE`` En vue de l’obtention du DOCTORAT DE L’UNIVERSITE´ DE TOULOUSE D´elivr´epar : l’Universit´eToulouse 3 Paul Sabatier (UT3 Paul Sabatier) Pr´esent´eeet soutenue le 15/01/2021 par : Sujay Mate D´eveloppement d’un simulateur du ciel pour les instruments `agrand champ de vue X/gamma en orbite terrestre basse - Application `al’´evaluation des performances du spectro-imageur SVOM/ECLAIRs JURY Natalie Webb Astronome Pr´esidente Melania Del Santo Charg´ede Recherche Rapportrice Lorezno Natalucci Senior Researcher Rapporteur Dipankar Bhattacharya Professeur Examinateur Philippe Laurent In´egnieur-Chercheur Examinateur Stephane´ Schanne In´egnieur-Chercheur Examinateur Philippe Guillemot Ing´enieurde Recherche Invit´e Laurent Bouchet Ing´enieurde Recherche Directeur de th`ese Jean-Luc Atteia Astronome Co-directeur de th`ese Ecole´ doctorale et sp´ecialit´e: SDU2E : Astrophysique, Sciences de l’Espace, Plan´etologie Unit´ede Recherche : Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Plan´etologie (IRAP), UMR5277, OMP/CNRS Directeur(s) de Th`ese : Laurent Bouchet et Jean-Luc Atteia Rapporteurs : Melania Del Santo et Lorezno Natalucci Acknowledgements This thesis is a product of three years of a great professional and personal journey. I would like to thank Laurent and Jean-Luc for giving me this opportunity. I have learnt a great deal while working on the thesis and it has laid a solid foundation for my future research endeavours. Working in a big collaboration like SVOM was a great experience and this thesis would not have been possible without the support of some of the members I had the pleasure to work with. First of all, I would like to thank Olivier for his time to time help and advice ; and thank you Benjamin for all the discussions which have been very useful to improve some aspects of the work. I would also like to thank members of the ECLAIRs DPIX team at IRAP and CNES (Roger, Carine, Karine, Pascale, Jean-Pascal and Philippe) for their time to time help. I am grateful to ECLAIRs team members at CEA (St´ephane,Nicolas, Henri, Aleksandra and Cyril), APC (Jean-Marc, Camille and Philippe), IAP (Fr´ed´ericand Maxime) and LUPM (Fr´ed´ericand Au´elia)whose help and advice was crucial to carry out the thesis. I am also thankful to all the other members of the SVOM collaboration with whom I had a great pleasure to interact. I would like to thank all the GAHEC members and administrative staff at IRAP for their help and advice. Particularly, the journey would not have been possible without the constant support of other doctoral students, many of whom are now great friends. In addition, I have had a great pleasure make some good friends here in Toulouse and I am thankful for their help and support. I am also thankful to the members of the thesis committee for their valuable suggestions during the thesis and the members of the jury for their suggestions to improve the manuscript. I would also like to thank all the members of the AstroSat team for their support and help. Also, the support from the IISER fraternity was very important and I thank all my friends. Finally and most importantly, I would like to thank my family for their support, not just for the past three years but for all the time up to achieving this personal success. 2 R´esum´e Les sursauts gamma (Gamma-Ray Bursts ou GRBs) sont les explosions les plus lumineuses de l’univers. On les observe sous la forme de bouff´eesde rayons X/γ (d’une dur´eede quelques millisecondes `aquelques dizaines de secondes) suivies d’une ´emission r´emanente (g´en´eralement `ade plus grandes longueurs d’onde). Ils r´esultent soit de la fusion de deux objets compacts (une paire d’´etoiles`aneutrons ou une ´etoile`a neutrons et un trou noir), soit de l’effondrement du noyau d’une ´etoilemassive (> 15M⊙). Les GRBs sont d’excellents candidats pour ´etudierla physique aux ´energies et densit´esextrˆemeset un outil astrophysique pour sonder l’histoire de l’univers car ils sont observ´es `atous les ˆagesde celui-ci. La mission spatiale Sino-Fran¸caise SVOM (lancement pr´evuen juin 2022) a pour objectif la d´etectionet l’´etudedes GRBs `al’aide d’instruments spatiaux et terrestres d´edi´esafin d’obtenir une couverture multi-longueurs d’onde. Le principal instrument `a bord du satellite SVOM est ECLAIRs, un imageur `amasque cod´e`agrand champ de vue ( 2 sr) fonctionnant dans la bande d’´energiede 4 `a150 keV. ECLAIRs d´etectera ∼ et localisera les GRBs (ainsi que d’autres sources transitoires `ahautes ´energies)en temps quasi r´eelgrˆace`ason « trigger » embarqu´e. Le bruit de fond d’ECLAIRs est ´elev´eet variable en raison du grand champ de vue et de la strat´egie de pointage de SVOM qui am`enela Terre `atransiter dans le champ de vue. Une nouvelle m´ethode (appel´ee« Particle Interaction Recycling Ap- proach » ou PIRA en anglais), bas´eesur des simulations de Monte-Carlo (GEANT4), a ´et´ed´evelopp´eepour estimer pr´ecis´ement et rapidement le bruit de fond variable. Les simulations du bruit de fond sont compl´et´eesavec des sources X et des sursauts gamma afin de g´en´ererdes sc´enariosd’observation complets. Le bruit de fond variable d’ECLAIRs pose des probl`emespour la d´etectiondes GRBs et affecte la sensibilit´ede l’instrument. Nous avons ´evalu´eles performances du « trigger » embarqu´e,notamment l’impact du bruit de fond sur la d´etectiondes sources transitoires et sa sensibilit´eaux caract´eristiquesdes GRBs (dur´ee,profil temporel, forme spectrale, position dans le champ de vue). ECLAIRs enverra au sol tous les photons d´etect´es.De plus, la disponibilit´ed’une plus grande puissance de calcul et une meilleure connaissance du contexte (par exemple, les variations du bruit de fond, les sources dans le champ de vue, etc.) au sol, nous ont conduits `ad´evelopper un « trigger » sol pour surmonter les difficult´esrencontr´eespar le « trigger » embarqu´e.Ainsi, nous proposons un algorithme bas´esur des transform´ees en ondelettes pour d´etecter les GRBs dans le cadre du « trigger » sol. Les travaux de cette th`ese,`asavoir le d´eveloppement de PIRA, l’´evaluation des performances et le d´eveloppement d’un nouvel algorithme de d´etection de sursauts, fournissent une base solide pour construire un « trigger » sol efficace, qui compl´etera le « trigger » embarqu´eet am´eliorera les performances globales de la mission SVOM. 2 Abstract Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) are the most luminous explosions in the universe. They are observed as bright flashes of gamma/X-rays (lasting a few milliseconds to a few tens of seconds) followed by an “afterglow” emission (usually at longer wavelengths). They are produced either due to the merger of two compact objects (a pair of neutron stars or a neutron star and a black hole) or due to the core collapse of a massive star (> 15M⊙). GRBs are excellent candidates to study physics at extreme energies and densities. They also constitute important astrophysical tools to probe the history of the universe as they are observed at all epochs. The upcoming (June 2022) Sino-French mission SVOM (Space-based multi-band as- tronomical Variable Objects Monitor) aims to detect and study GRBs using dedicated space and ground based instruments to obtain multi-wavelength coverage. The primary instrument onboard SVOM spacecraft is ECLAIRs, a wide-field ( 2 sr) coded-mask ∼ imager sensitive in the 4 - 150 keV energy range. ECLAIRs will detect and localise GRBs (and other high energy transients) in near real time using an onboard trigger. ECLAIRs will encounter a high and variable background due to the wide field- of-view (FoV) and the pointing strategy of SVOM which makes the Earth transit through the FoV. A new method (called Particle Interaction Recycling Approach or PIRA), based on Monte-Carlo simulations (GEANT4), was developed to estimate the variable background accurately and rapidly. The simulations of the background are complemented with simulations of X-ray sources and gamma-ray bursts to generate complete observation scenarios. The variable background of ECLAIRs poses challenges to detect GRBs and affects the sensitivity of the instrument. We use the simulated data to evaluate the perfor- mance of the onboard trigger, in particular, the impact of the variable background and its sensitivity to the GRB characteristics (duration, temporal profile, spectral shape, position in the FoV). ECLAIRs will send all detected photons to the ground. In addition, the availability of a larger computational power and the better knowledge of the context (e.g.
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