Related papers: A Combined Compton and Coded-aperture Telescope fo…
Spectral analysis is one of the most powerful technologies for studying and understanding matter. As the devices for spectral analysis, spectrometers are widely used in material detection, isotope analysis, trace gas detection, and the…
Characterise the large-scale structure in the Universe from present times to the high redshift epoch of reionisation is essential to constraining the cosmology, the history of star formation and reionisation, measuring the gas content of…
The Advanced Compton Telescope (ACT) has been suggested to be the optimal next-generation instrument to study nuclear gamma-ray lines. In this work, we investigate the potential of three hypothetical designs of the ACT to perform SN…
Purpose: Handheld gamma cameras with coded aperture collimators are under investigation for intraoperative imaging in nuclear medicine. Coded apertures are a promising collimation technique for applications such as lymph node localization…
To fully understand cosmic black hole growth we need to constrain the population of heavily obscured active galactic nuclei (AGN) at the peak of cosmic black hole growth ($z\sim$1-3). Sources with obscuring column densities higher than…
X-ray transition radiation can be used to measure the Lorentz factor of relativistic particles. At energies approaching gamma = E/mc^2 = 10^5, transition radiation detectors (TRDs) can be optimized by using thick (sim 5 - 10 mil) foils with…
$\gamma$-ray observations of the Cygnus Cocoon, an extended source surrounding the Cygnus X star-forming region, suggest the presence of a cosmic ray accelerator reaching energies up to a few PeV. The very-high-energy (VHE; 0.1-100~TeV)…
The proposed black-hole finder mission EXIST will consist of multiple wide-field hard X-ray coded-aperture telescopes. The high science goals set for the mission require innovations in telescope design. In particular, wide energy band…
The Compton-thick Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) arguably constitute the most elusive class of sources as they are absorbed by large column densities above logN_H(cm^-2)=24. These extreme absorptions hamper the detection of the central source…
This chapter outlines the general principles for the detection and characterisation of high-energy $\gamma$-ray photons in the energy range from MeV to GeV. Applications of these fundamental photon-matter interaction processes to the…
We present a new metric that uses the spectral curvature (SC) above 10 keV to identify Compton-thick AGN in low-quality Swift BAT X-ray data. Using NuSTAR, we observe nine high SC-selected AGN. We find that high-sensitivity spectra show the…
A number of techniques are being developed to solve the monstrous sensitivity gap that exists between the energy ranges of good sensitivity of the Compton and of the pair telescopes and to extend polarimetry to the MeV gamma-ray world. I…
GRIPS is one example of next generation telescopes proposed for astronomy the energy range between hard X-ray mirror instruments such as NuStar and the Fermi telescope. The Compton telescope principle is an advantageous concept in view of…
We present results from a detailed GEANT4 simulation of a proposed Muon Tomography System that employs compact Micro Pattern Gas Detectors with high spatial resolution. A basic Point-Of-Closest-Approach algorithm is applied to reconstructed…
We present the previously unanalysed high quality XMM-Newton spectrum of an ultraluminous X-ray source candidate in NGC 4517. As with other high quality ULX spectra, a downturn in the spectrum is observed at ~6 keV. Both of the recent disc…
Context. Millimetre-wave astronomy is an important tool for both general astrophysics studies and cosmology. A large number of unidentified sources are being detected by the large field-of-view continuum instruments operating on large…
We introduce a focal-plane detector for advancing the energy and angular resolutions of current X-ray telescopes. The architecture integrates a metallic magnetic microcalorimeter (MMC) array of paramagnetic absorber pads with a thin layer…
Based on measurements with the Effelsberg 100-m telescope, a multi-line study of molecular species is presented toward the gravitational lens system PKS1830-211. Obtaining average radial velocities and performing Large Velocity Gradient…
The precise reconstruction of Compton-scatter events is paramount for an imaging medium-energy gamma-ray telescope. The proposed AMEGO-X is enabled by a silicon tracker utilizing AstroPix chips - a pixelated silicon HVCMOS sensor novel for…
We present the results of simultaneous XMM-Newton and RXTE observations of the Broad-Line Radio Galaxy 3C 111. We find that the Compton reflection bump is extremely weak, however, broad residuals are clearly present in the spectrum near the…