Related papers: X-ray Polarization at the Crossroads
Polarizations of electromagnetic waves from distant galaxies are known to be correlated with the source orientations. These quantities have been used to search for signals of cosmological birefringence. We review and classify transformation…
The birefringence phenomenon in the vacuum with a constant magnetic background of arbitrary strength is considered within the framework of the effective action approach. A new feature of the birefringence in a magnetized vacuum is that the…
While the scientific potential of high-energy X-ray and gamma-ray polarimetry has long been recognized, measuring the polarization of high-energy photons is challenging. To date, there has been very few significant detections from an…
Low-mass X-ray binaries hosting weakly magnetized neutron stars (NS-LMXBs) are among the brightest sources in the X-ray sky. Since 2021, the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) has provided new measurements of the X-ray polarization…
A strong electromagnetic field polarizes the vacuum and in the presence of an electric field creates pairs of a charged particle and its anti-particle. Magnetars, highly magnetized neutron stars with magnetic field comparable to or greater…
X-ray polarimetry, sometimes alone, and sometimes coupled to spectral and temporal variability measurements and to imaging, allows a wealth of physical phenomena in astrophysics to be studied. X-ray polarimetry investigates the acceleration…
Linearly polarized emission is described, in general, in terms of the Stokes parameters $Q$ and $U$, from which the polarization intensity and polarization angle can be determined. Although the polarization intensity and polarization angle…
In vacuum high-intensity lasers can cause photon-photon interaction via the process of virtual vacuum polarization which may be measured by the phase velocity shift of photons across intense fields. In the optical frequency domain, the…
Birefringence in ionized, magnetized media is usually measured as Faraday rotation of linearly polarized radiation. However, pulses propagating through regions with very large Faraday rotation measures (RMs) can split into circularly…
Following the detection of polarized diffuse Galactic emission in 1962 a number of surveys were undertaken at low frequencies in the following years resulting in important insights on the local magnetic field, polarization of the giant…
We present our findings on magnetar spectral line analysis in the context of upcoming high resolution, high effective area, high throughput X-ray telescopes for two cases: persistent magnetar emission and magnetar bursts. For magnetars in…
In this document, we describe the scientific potential of blazar observations with a X-ray polarimetry mission like GEMS (Gravity and Extreme Magnetism SMEX). We describe five blazar science investigations that such a mission would enable:…
The X-ray emission of magnetic intermediate mass Ap/Bp stars is reviewed and put into context of intrinsic as well as extrinsic hypotheses for its origin. New X-ray observations of Ap/Bp stars are presented and combined with an updated…
We report on an X-ray polarimetric observation of the high-mass X-ray binary LMC X-1 in the high/soft state, obtained by the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) in October 2022. The measured polarization is below the minimum…
We have generated an extended version of rather simplified but physically oriented three-dimensional magnetar emission model, STEMS3D, to allow spectral investigations up to 100 keV. We have then applied it to the broadband spectral spectra…
X-ray polarimetry has great scientific potential and new experiments, such as X-Calibur, PoGOLite, XIPE, and GEMS, will not only be orders of magnitude more sensitive than previous missions, but also provide the capability to measure…
In this paper, we systematically calculate the polarization in soft X-rays emitted from magnetized neutron stars, which are expected to be observed by the next-generation X-ray satellites. Magnetars are one of the targets for these…
Using polarization measurements in remote sensing and optical studies allows retrieving more information. We consider relationship between the reflection coefficients of plane and rough surfaces for linearly polarized waves. Certain…
We introduce a laser heterodyne polarimeter designed for the precision measurement of sub $\mu\mathrm{rad}$ differential phase shifts due to birefringence. The polarimeter will be used in an initial testbed for a potential future vacuum…
We review the basic principles of X-ray polarimetry and current detector technologies based on the photoelectric effect, Bragg reflection, and Compton scattering. Recent technological advances in high-spatial-resolution gas-filled X-ray…