Related papers: Balloon-borne gamma-ray polarimetry
Accessing the polarization of photon allows to understand the mechanisms behind its emission or scattering, revealing much about a peculiar environment or a probed object. For energy above $\sim$10~MeV, the pair production dominates the…
Polarimetry is an area of high energy astrophysics which is still relatively unexplored, even though it is recognized that this type of measurement could drastically increase our knowledge of the physics and geometry of high energy sources.…
Despite over 50 years of Gamma-Ray Burst (GRB) observations many open questions remain about their nature and the environments in which the emission takes place. Polarization measurements of the GRB prompt emission have long been theorized…
The Balloon-borne Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope for Polarimetry (BLASTPol) is a suborbital mapping experiment designed to study the role magnetic fields play in star formation. BLASTPol has had two science flights from McMurdo…
As a space-borne detector POLAR is designed to conduct hard X-ray polarization measurements of gamma-ray bursts on the statistically significant sample of events and with an unprecedented accuracy. During its development phase a number of…
Recent X-ray polarimetric data on the prototypical black hole X-ray binary Cyg~X-1 from the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer present tight constraints on accretion geometry in the hard spectral state. Contrary to general expectations of a…
X-ray polarimetry promises us an unprecedented look at the structure of magnetic fields and on the processes at the base of acceleration of particles up to ultrarelativistic energies in relativistic jets. Crucial pieces of information are…
Because of their inherently high flux allowing the detection of clear signals, black hole X-ray binaries are interesting candidates for polarization studies, even if no polarization signals have been observed from them before. Such…
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 polarization measurement is an important tool to probe the prompt emission mechanism in gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). The synchrotron photons can be scattered by cold electrons in the outflow via Compton scattering processes. The observed…
We devised and built a light, compact and transportable X-ray polarized source based on the Bragg diffraction at nearly 45 degrees. The source is composed by a crystal coupled to a small power X-ray tube. The angles of incidence are…
X-ray polarimetry of solar flares is still a not well established field of observation of our star. Past polarimeters were not able to measure with a high significance the polarization in X-rays from solar flares. Moreover, they had no…
We describe a new implementation of a broad-band soft X-ray polarimeter, substantially based on a previous design. This implementation, the Pioneer Soft X-ray Polarimeter (PiSoX) is a SmallSat, designed for NASA's call for Astrophysics…
We describe the development of a bolometric receiver designed to measure the arcminute-scale polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). The Polatron will be mounted at the Cassegrain focus of the 5.5 m telescope at the Owens…
X-ray Polarimetry is almost as old as X-ray Astronomy. Since the first discovery of X-ray sources theoretical analysis suggested that a high degree of linear polarization could be expected due either to the, extremely non thermal, emission…
Blazars, supermassive black hole systems (SMBHs) with highly relativistic jets aligned with the line of sight, are the most powerful long-lived emitters of electromagnetic emission in the Universe. We report here on a radio to gamma-ray…
Polarization is a powerful diagnostic tool to constrain the site of the high-energy pulsed emission and particle acceleration in gamma-ray pulsars. Recent particle-in-cell simulations of pulsar magnetosphere suggest that high-energy…
The dissipation of energy flux in blazar jets plays a key role in the acceleration of relativistic particles. Two possibilities are commonly considered for the dissipation processes, magnetic reconnection -- possibly triggered by…
The Balloon-borne Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope for Polarimetry (BLASTPol) was a suborbital experiment designed to map magnetic fields in order to study their role in star formation processes. BLASTPol made detailed polarization…
BOOMERANG is a balloon-borne telescope designed for long duration (LDB) flights around Antarctica. The second LDB Flight of BOOMERANG took place in January 2003. The primary goal of this flight was to measure the polarization of the CMB.…