Context. Because of the relatively broad angular resolution of current gamma-ray instruments in the MeV–GeV energy range, the photons of a given source are mixed with those coming from nearby sources ...or diffuse background. This source confusion seriously hampers the search for pulsation from faint sources. Aims. Statistical tests for pulsation can be made significantly more sensitive when the probability that a photon comes from the pulsar is used as a weight. However, computing this probability requires knowledge of the spectral model of all sources in the region of interest, including the pulsar itself. This is not possible for very faint pulsars that are not detected as gamma-ray sources or whose spectrum is not measured precisely enough. Extending the event-weighted pulsation search to such very faint gamma-ray sources would allow improving our knowledge of the gamma-ray pulsar population. Methods. We present two methods that overcome this limitation by scanning the spectral parameter space, while minimizing the number of trials. The first one approximates the source to background ratio yielding a simple estimate of the weight while the second one makes use of the full spatial and spectral information of the region of interest around the pulsar. Results. We tested these new methods on a sample of 144 gamma-ray pulsars already detected by the Fermi Large Area Telescope data. Both methods detect pulsation from all pulsars of the sample, including the ones for which no significant phase-averaged gamma-ray emission is detected.
Context.
The analysis of
Fermi
-Large Area Telescope (LAT) gamma-ray data in a given Region of Interest (RoI) usually consists of performing a binned log-likelihood fit in order to determine the sky ...model that after convolution with the instrument response best accounts for the distribution of observed counts.
Aims.
While tools are available to perform such a fit, it is not easy to check the goodness-of-fit. The difficulty of the assessment of the data-model agreement is twofold. First of all, the observed and predicted counts are binned in three dimensions (two spatial dimensions and one energy dimension) and comparing two 3D maps is not straightforward. Secondly, gamma-ray source spectra generally decrease with energy as the inverse of the energy square. As a consequence, the number of counts above several GeV generally falls into the Poisson regime, which precludes performing a simple
χ
2
test.
Methods.
We propose a method that overcomes these two obstacles by producing and comparing, at each pixel of the analyzed RoI, spatially integrated count spectra for data and model. The comparison follows a log-likelihood approach that extends the
χ
2
test to histograms with low statistics. This method can take into account likelihood weights that are used to account for systematic uncertainties.
Results.
We optimize the new method so that it provides a fast and reliable tool to assess the goodness-of-fit of
Fermi
-LAT data and we use it to check the latest gamma-ray source catalog on 10 years of data.
Energy storage: Applications and challenges Kousksou, T.; Bruel, P.; Jamil, A. ...
Solar energy materials and solar cells,
January 2014, 2014, 2014-01-00, 20140101, Volume:
120, Issue:
Part. A
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
In this paper, an updated review of the state of technology and installations of several energy storage technologies were presented, and their various characteristics were analyzed. The analyses ...included their storage properties, current state in the industry and feasibility for future installation. The paper includes also the main characteristics of energy storage technologies suitable for renewable energy systems.
This paper presents a review of the available technologies to provide cooling from solar energy for both thermal and photovoltaic ways. Several multi-criteria performance indicators figuring in the ...literature are presented followed by a pros and cons analysis of the different solar thermal cooling processes. A market study is also carried out to evidence the potential of these solar cooling technologies. Finally, an overview of various solar cooling installations in Europe, Egypt and China is presented.
ABSTRACT Most of the celestial γ rays detected by the Large Area Telescope (LAT) on board the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope originate from the interstellar medium when energetic cosmic rays ...interact with interstellar nucleons and photons. Conventional point-source and extended-source studies rely on the modeling of this diffuse emission for accurate characterization. Here, we describe the development of the Galactic Interstellar Emission Model (GIEM), which is the standard adopted by the LAT Collaboration and is publicly available. This model is based on a linear combination of maps for interstellar gas column density in Galactocentric annuli and for the inverse-Compton emission produced in the Galaxy. In the GIEM, we also include large-scale structures like Loop I and the Fermi bubbles. The measured gas emissivity spectra confirm that the cosmic-ray proton density decreases with Galactocentric distance beyond 5 kpc from the Galactic Center. The measurements also suggest a softening of the proton spectrum with Galactocentric distance. We observe that the Fermi bubbles have boundaries with a shape similar to a catenary at latitudes below 20° and we observe an enhanced emission toward their base extending in the north and south Galactic directions and located within ∼4° of the Galactic Center.
The gamma -ray sky can be decomposed into individually detected sources, diffuse emission attributed to the interactions of Galactic cosmic rays with gas and radiation fields, and a residual all-sky ...emission component commonly called the isotropic diffuse gamma -ray background (IGRB). The IGRB comprises all extragalactic emissions too faint or too diffuse to be resolved in a given survey, as well as any residual Galactic foregrounds that are approximately isotropic. The first IGRB measurement with the Large Area Telescope (LAT) on board the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope (Fermi) used 10 months of sky-survey data and considered an energy range between 200 MeV and 100 GeV. Improvements in event selection and characterization of cosmic-ray backgrounds, better understanding of the diffuse Galactic emission (DGE), and a longer data accumulation of 50 months allow for a refinement and extension of the IGRB measurement with the LAT, now covering the energy range from 100 MeV to 820 GeV. The IGRB spectrum shows a significant high-energy cutoff feature and can be well described over nearly four decades in energy by a power law with exponential cutoff having a spectral index of 2.32 + or - 0.02 and a break energy of (279 + or - 52) GeV using our baseline DGE model. The total intensity attributed to the IGRB is (7.2 + or - 0.6) x 10 super(-6) cm super(-2) s super(-1) sr super(-1) above 100 MeV, with an additional +15%/-30% systematic uncertainty due to the Galactic diffuse foregrounds.
We present a search for spatial extension in high-latitude ( ) sources in recent Fermi point source catalogs. The result is the Fermi High-Latitude Extended Sources Catalog, which provides source ...extensions (or upper limits thereof) and likelihood profiles for a suite of tested source morphologies. We find 24 extended sources, 19 of which were not previously characterized as extended. These include sources that are potentially associated with supernova remnants and star-forming regions. We also found extended γ-ray emission in the vicinity of the Cen A radio lobes and-at GeV energies for the first time-spatially coincident with the radio emission of the SNR CTA 1, as well as from the Crab Nebula. We also searched for halos around active galactic nuclei, which are predicted from electromagnetic cascades induced by the e+e− pairs that are deflected in intergalactic magnetic fields. These pairs are produced when γ-rays interact with background radiation fields. We do not find evidence for extension in individual sources or in stacked source samples. This enables us to place limits on the flux of the extended source components, which are then used to constrain the intergalactic magnetic field to be stronger than 3 × 10−16 G for a coherence length λ 10 kpc, even when conservative assumptions on the source duty cycle are made. This improves previous limits by several orders of magnitude.
The light emitted by all galaxies over the history of the Universe produces the extragalactic background light (EBL) at ultraviolet, optical, and infrared wavelengths. The EBL is a source of opacity ...for gamma rays via photon-photon interactions, leaving an imprint in the spectra of distant gamma-ray sources. We measured this attenuation using 739 active galaxies and one gamma-ray burst detected by the Fermi Large Area Telescope. This allowed us to reconstruct the evolution of the EBL and determine the star formation history of the Universe over 90% of cosmic time. Our star formation history is consistent with independent measurements from galaxy surveys, peaking at redshift
~ 2. Upper limits of the EBL at the epoch of reionization suggest a turnover in the abundance of faint galaxies at
~ 6.
ABSTRACT To uniformly determine the properties of supernova remnants (SNRs) at high energies, we have developed the first systematic survey at energies from 1 to 100 GeV using data from the Fermi ...Large Area Telescope (LAT). Based on the spatial overlap of sources detected at GeV energies with SNRs known from radio surveys, we classify 30 sources as likely GeV SNRs. We also report 14 marginal associations and 245 flux upper limits. A mock catalog in which the positions of known remnants are scrambled in Galactic longitude allows us to determine an upper limit of 22% on the number of GeV candidates falsely identified as SNRs. We have also developed a method to estimate spectral and spatial systematic errors arising from the diffuse interstellar emission model, a key component of all Galactic Fermi LAT analyses. By studying remnants uniformly in aggregate, we measure the GeV properties common to these objects and provide a crucial context for the detailed modeling of individual SNRs. Combining our GeV results with multiwavelength (MW) data, including radio, X-ray, and TeV, we demonstrate the need for improvements to previously sufficient, simple models describing the GeV and radio emission from these objects. We model the GeV and MW emission from SNRs in aggregate to constrain their maximal contribution to observed Galactic cosmic rays.
ABSTRACT We report for the first time a γ-ray and multiwavelength nearly periodic oscillation in an active galactic nucleus. Using the Fermi Large Area Telescope we have discovered an apparent ...quasi-periodicity in the γ-ray flux (E > 100 MeV) from the GeV/TeV BL Lac object PG 1553+113. The marginal significance of the 2.18 0.08 year period γ-ray cycle is strengthened by correlated oscillations observed in radio and optical fluxes, through data collected in the Owens Valley Radio Observatory, Tuorla, Katzman Automatic Imaging Telescope, and Catalina Sky Survey monitoring programs and Swift-UVOT. The optical cycle appearing in ∼10 years of data has a similar period, while the 15 GHz oscillation is less regular than seen in the other bands. Further long-term multiwavelength monitoring of this blazar may discriminate among the possible explanations for this quasi-periodicity.
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