Related papers: HX-POL - A Balloon-Borne Hard X-Ray Polarimeter
This paper discusses the latest progress in the development of GRAPE (Gamma-Ray Polarimeter Experiment), a hard X-ray Compton Polarimeter. The purpose of GRAPE is to measure the polarization of hard X-rays in the 50-300 keV energy range. We…
We have measured the linear polarisation of hard X-ray emission from the Crab in a previously unexplored energy interval, 20-120 keV. The introduction of two new observational parameters, the polarisation fraction and angle stands to…
The development of micropixel gas detectors, capable to image tracks produced in a gas by photoelectrons, makes possible to perform polarimetry of X-ray celestial sources in the focus of grazing incidence X-ray telescopes. HXMT is a mission…
Linear polarization in X- and gamma-rays is an important diagnostic of many astrophysical sources, foremost giving information about their geometry, magnetic fields, and radiation mechanisms. However, very few X-ray polarization…
Since the initial exploration of soft gamma-ray sky in the 60's, high-energy celestial sources have been mainly characterized through imaging, spectroscopy and timing analysis. Despite tremendous progress in the field, the radiation…
The last decade has seen a leapfrog in the interest in X-ray polarimetry with a number of new polarization measurements in hard X-rays from AstroSat, POLAR, GAP, and PoGO+. The measurements provide some interesting insights into various…
This paper reviews the development status of GRAPE (the Gamma-Ray Polarimeter Experiment), a hard X-ray Compton Polarimeter. The purpose of GRAPE is to measure the polarization of hard X-rays in the 50-300 keV energy range. We are…
In the 50 years since the advent of X-ray astronomy there have been many scientific advances due to the development of new experimental techniques for detecting and characterising X-rays. Observations of X-ray polarisation have, however,…
The Balloon-borne Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope for Polarimetry (BLAST-Pol) is a suborbital mapping experiment designed to study the role played by magnetic fields in the star formation process. BLAST-Pol is the reconstructed BLAST…
We present recent improvements in polarization analysis with the INTEGRAL SPI data. The SPI detector plane consists of 19 independent Ge crystals and can operate as a polarimeter. The anisotropy characteristics of Compton diffusions can…
The development of micropixel gas detectors, capable to image tracks produced in a gas by photoelectrons, makes possible to perform polarimetry of X-ray celestial sources in the focus of grazing incidence X-ray telescopes. HXMT is a mission…
Strong magnetic fields, synchrotron emission, and Compton scattering are omnipresent in compact celestial X-ray sources. Emissions in the X-ray energy band are consequently expected to be linearly polarized. X-ray polarimetry provides a…
We report measurements of the linear polarisation degree (PD) and angle (PA) for hard X-ray emission from the Crab pulsar and wind nebula. Measurements were made with the XL-Calibur ($\sim$15-80 keV) balloon-borne Compton-scattering…
POLAR is a new satellite-born detector aiming to measure the polarization of an unprecedented number of Gamma-Ray Bursts in the 50-500 keV energy range. The instrument, launched on-board the Tiangong-2 Chinese Space lab on the 15th of…
We describe a new balloon-borne instrument (PoGOLite) capable of detecting 10% polarisation from 200mCrab point-like sources between 25 and 80keV in one 6 hour flight. Polarisation measurements in the soft gamma-ray band are expected to…
We present commissioning data for the POLISH instrument obtained on the Hale 5-m telescope. The goal of this high precision polarimeter is to constrain orbital inclination of high mass X-ray binaries and to therefore obtain independent mass…
Polarimetric observations of celestial sources in the hard X-ray band stand to provide new information on emission mechanisms and source geometries. PoGO+ is a Compton scattering polarimeter (20-150 keV) optimised for the observation of the…
PoGOLite is a balloon-borne hard X-ray polarimeter dedicated to the study of point sources. Compton scattered events are registered using an array of plastic scintillator units to determine the polarisation of incident X-rays in the energy…
The polarisation of x-ray photons can be determined by measuring the direction of emission of a K-shell photoelectron. Effective exploitation of this effect below 10 keV would allow development of a highly sensitive x-ray polarimeter…
Photons preferentially Compton scatter perpendicular to the plane of polarisation. This property can be exploited to design instruments to measure the linear polarisation of hard X-rays ($\sim$10 - 100 keV). Photons may undergo two…