Observational Aspects of Hard X-Ray Polarimetry
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Observational Aspects of Hard X-ray Polarimetry A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Tanmoy Chattopadhyay (Roll No. 11330008) Under the guidance of Dr. Santosh V. Vadawale Associate Professor Astronomy & Astrophysics Division Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad, India. DISCIPLINE OF PHYSICS INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY GANDHINAGAR 2015 to my family Declaration I declare that this written submission represents my ideas in my own words and where others' ideas or words have been included, I have adequately cited and referenced the original sources. I also declare that I have adhered to all principles of academic honesty and integrity and have not misrepresented or fabricated or falsified any idea/data/fact/source in my submission. I understand that any violation of the above will be cause for disciplinary action by the Institute and can also evoke penal action from the sources which have thus not been properly cited or from whom proper permission has not been taken when needed. (Signature) (Name: Tanmoy Chattopadhyay) (Roll No: 11330008) Date: November 26, 2015 CERTIFICATE It is certified that the work contained in the thesis titled \Observational Aspects of Hard X-ray Polarimetry" by Mr. Tanmoy Chattopadhyay (Roll No. 11330008), has been carried out under my supervision and that this work has not been submitted elsewhere for a degree. Dr. Santosh V. Vadawale (Thesis Supervisor) Associate Professor, Astronomy & Astrophysics Division Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad, India. Date: i Acknowledgements First and foremost, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my advisor Dr. Santosh Vadawale for his continuous support in my Ph.D study and related research. His guidance helped me throughout the time of PhD and writing of this thesis. Besides my advisor, I would like to thank the rest of my thesis committee: Prof. N. M. Ashok, Prof. Janardhan Padmanabhan, and Dr. Sachindra Naik, for their insightful comments and encouragement. My sincere thanks also goes to Prof. A. R. Rao, Prof. Dipankar Bhattacharya, who provided me an opportunity to join Astrosat-CZTI team, giving me access to the laboratory and research facilities. Without their precious support it would not be possible to conduct this research. I would like to thank other team members of the CZTI team Dr. Varun Bhalerao, Rasika, Pramod, Kutty, Malkar sir, Amir, Anish, Nilkanth, Rakesh, Mithun and others for their continuous support in my research work in PRL, TIFR and IUCAA. I would like to thank all the faculty members in Astronomy & Astrophysics di- vision, PRL, specially Prof. B. G. Anandrao, Prof. T. Chandrasekhar, Dr. Ashok Singal, Prof. U. C. Joshi, Prof. H. O. Vats, Prof. N. M. Ashok, Prof. D. P. K. Banerjee, Prof. P. Janardhan, Prof. K. S. Baliyan, Dr. A. Chakraborty, Dr. Sachindra Naik, Dr. S. Ganesh, Dr. Mudit Srivastava and Dr. V. Venkataraman for their useful comments and suggestions and continuous support during my PhD tenure. I thank my fellow labmates in PRL − Mr. Shanmugam M., Mr. Shivku- mar Goyal, Mithun, Rishab, Arpit, Tinkel, Mr. A. B. Shah and others for the stimulating discussions and helping me out in my research work. Also I thank my batchmates and friends for their continuous support and all the fun we have had in the last five years. I am grateful to Priyanka, Arko, Monojit, Balaji, Pragya and Golu, Naveen, Sneha, Shweta and others for spending valuable time with me in the last five years, which I will cherish throughout my life. I take this opportunity to thank my B.Sc. and M.Sc. batchmates and friends − Rupomoy, Abhisek, Sudip, Rajib, Dhrubo, Debraj, Someswar, Kousik K., Kousik B., Tanmoy R., Suman, Saptorshi, Abhivav, Avdesh, Mayukh da, Aniruddha da, Biswarup, Sibu, Jitu, Bablu who had directly and indirectly helped me achieved this goal. I am grateful to Prof. Hiralal Yadav in B.H.U., Prof. Bhabani Prasad Mandal in B.H.U., and Prof. Ashok Banerjee in T.D.B. college for enlightening me the first glance of research. I am thankful to all my teachers especially Amitabha sir ii and Phonibhusan sir for teaching me not only the academic subjects but also the important lessons in life. Last but not the least, I would like to thank my family: my parents and to my sisters for their encouragement, support and attention throughout my life. (Tanmoy Chattopadhyay) iii Abstract Sensitive polarization measurements in X-ray may address a wealth of as- trophysical phenomena, which so far remain beyond our understanding through available X-ray spectroscopic, imaging, and timing studies. Though scientific potential of X-ray polarimetry was realized long ago, there has not been any significant advancement in this field for the last four decades since the birth of X-ray astronomy. The only successful polarization measurement in X-rays dates back to 1976, when a Bragg polarimeter onboard OSO-8 measured polarization of Crab nebula. Primary reason behind the lack in progress is its extreme photon hungry nature, which results in poor sensitivity of the polarimeters. Recently, in the last decade or so, with the advancement in detection technol- ogy, X-ray polarimetry may see a significant progress in near future, especially in soft X-rays with the invention of photoelectron tracking polarimeters. Though photoelectric polarimeters are expected to provide sensitive polarization mea- surements of celestial X-ray sources, they are sensitive only in soft X-rays, where the radiation from the sources is dominated by thermal radiation and therefore expected to be less polarized. On the other hand, in hard X-rays, sources are ex- pected to be highly polarized due to the dominance of nonthermal emission over its thermal counterpart. Moreover, polarization measurements in hard X-rays promises to address few interesting scientific issues regarding geometry of corona for black hole sources, emission mechanism responsible for the higher energy peak in the blazars, accretion geometry close to the magnetic poles in accreting neutron star systems and acceleration mechanism in solar flares. Compton polarimeters provide better sensitivity than photoelectric polarimeters in hard X-rays with a broad energy band of operation. Recently, with the development of hard X-ray focusing optics e.g. NuSTAR, Astro-H, it is now possible to conceive Comp- ton polarimeters at the focal plane of such hard X-ray telescopes, which may provide sensitive polarization measurements due to flux concentration in hard X-rays with a very low background. On the other hand, such a configuration ensures implementation of an optimized geometry close to an ideal one for the Compton polarimeters. In this context, we initiated the development of a fo- iv cal plane Compton polarimeter, consisting of a plastic scatterer surrounded by a cylindrical array of CsI(Tl) scintillators. Geant−4 simulations of the planned configuration estimates 1% MDP for a 100 mCrab source in 1 million seconds of exposure. Sensitivity of the instrument is found to be critically dependent on the lower energy detection limit of the plastic scatterer; lower the threshold, better is the sensitivity. In the actual experiment, the plastic is readout by a photomul- tiplier tube procured from Saint-Gobain. We carried out extensive experiments to characterize the plastic especially for lower energy depositions. The CsI(Tl) scintillators are readout by Si photomultipliers (SiPM). SiPMs are small in size and robust and therefore provide the compactness necessary for the designing of focal plane detectors. Each of the CsI(Tl)-SiPM systems was characterized precisely to estimate their energy threshold and detection probability along the length of the scintillators away from SiPM. Finally, we integrated the Compton polarimeter and tested its response to polarized and unpolarized radiation and compared the experimental results with Geant−4 simulation. Despite the growing realization of the scientific values of X-ray polarimetry and the efforts in developing sensitive X-ray polarimeters, there has not been a single dedicated X-ray polarimetry mission planned in near future. In this sce- nario, it is equally important to attempt polarization measurements from the existing or planned instruments which are not meant for X-ray polarization mea- surements but could be sensitive to it. There have been several attempts in past in retrieving polarization information from few of such spectroscopic instruments like RHESSI, INTEGRAL-IBIS, INTEGRAL-SPI. Cadmium Zinc Telluride Im- ager (CZTI) onboard Astrosat, India's first astronomical mission, is one of such instruments which is expected to provide sensitive polarization measurements for bright X-ray sources. CZTI consists of 64 CZT detector modules, each of which is 5 mm thick and 4 cm × 4 cm in size. Each CZT module is subdivided into 256 pixels with pixel pitch of 2.5 mm. Due to its pixelation nature and significant Compton scattering efficiency at energies beyond 100 keV, CZTI can work as a sensitive Compton polarimeter in hard X-rays. Detailed Geant−4 simulations and polarization experiments with the flight configuration of CZTI show that v CZTI will have significant polarization measurement capability for bright sources in hard X-rays. CZTI is primarily a spectroscopic instrument with coded mask imaging. To properly utilize the spectroscopic capabilities of CZT detectors, it is important to generate accurate response matrix for CZTI, which in turn requires precise modelling of the CZT lines shapes for monoenergetic X-ray interaction. CZT detectors show an extended lower energy tail of an otherwise Gaussian line shape due to low mobility and lifetime of the charge carriers. On the other hand, inter- pixel charge sharing may also contribute to the lower energy tail making the line shape more complicated. We have developed a model to predict the line shapes from CZTI modules taking into account the mobility and lifetime of the charge carriers and charge sharing fractions.