Related papers: Polarization Leakage and the IXPE PSF

Spatially resolved polarization measurements of extended X-ray sources are expanding our understanding of the emission mechanisms and magnetic field properties involved. Such measurements have been possible in the past few years thanks to…

X-ray polarimetry, based on Gas Pixel Detectors (GPDs), have reached a high level of maturity with the Imaging X-ray Polarimeter Explorer (IXPE) leading to the first ever spatially resolved polarimetric measures. However, being this a new…

A critical challenge in the observation of the redshifted 21-cm line is its separation from bright Galactic and extragalactic foregrounds. In particular, the instrumental leakage of polarized foregrounds, which undergo significant Faraday…

IXPE is a Small Explorer mission that was launched at the end of 2021 to measure the polarization of X-ray emission from tens of astronomical sources. Its focal plane detectors are based on the Gas Pixel Detector, which measures the…

The launch of the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE), the first space-based polarimeter since 1978, offers a two order of magnitude improvement to the measurement of X-ray polarisation than its predecessor OSO-8, offering…

Polarimetric observations are affected by leakage of unpolarized light into the polarization channels, in a way that varies with the angular position of the source relative to the optical axis. The off-axis part of the leakage is often…

The Gas Pixel Detector is an X-ray polarimeter to fly on-board IXPE and other missions. To correctly measure the source polarization, the response of IXPE's GPDs to unpolarized radiation has to be calibrated and corrected. In this paper we…

We investigate the ellipticity of the point-spread function (PSF) produced by imaging an unresolved source with a telescope, subject to the effects of atmospheric turbulence. It is important to quantify these effects in order to understand…

We present a method for enhancing the sensitivity of X-ray telescopic observations with imaging polarimeters, with a focus on the gas pixel detectors (GPDs) to be flown on the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE). Our analysis…

We introduce a novel framework for upsampled Point Spread Function (PSF) modeling using pixel-level Bayesian inference. Accurate PSF characterization is critical for precision measurements in many fields including: weak lensing, astrometry,…

In single molecule orientation localization microscopy, valuable information about the orientation and longitudinal position of each molecule is often encoded in the shape of the point spread function (PSF). This shape, though, can be…

Shape from Polarization (SfP) estimates surface normals using photos captured at different polarizer rotations. Fundamentally, the SfP model assumes that light is reflected either diffusely or specularly. However, this model is not valid…

X-ray polarization should provide new probes of magnetic field geometry and acceleration physics near the base of blazar jets, but near-future missions will have limited sensitivity. We thus use existing lower energy data and X-ray…

As the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) measures increasingly faint sources, the need for precise polarimetry extraction becomes paramount. In addition to previously described neural-net (NN) weights, we introduce here point-spread…

Point-spread function (PSF) estimation in spatially undersampled images is challenging because large pixels average fine-scale spatial information. This is problematic when fine-resolution details are necessary, as in optimal photometry…

Diagnosing free electron laser (FEL) polarization is critical for polarization-modulated research such as x-ray free electron laser (XFEL) diffraction imaging and probing material magnetism. In an electron time-of-flight (eTOF)\…

Rotating-PSF imaging via spiral phase engineering can localize point sources over large focal depths in a snapshot mode. This letter presents a full vector-field analysis of the rotating-PSF imager that quantifies the PSF signature of the…

We consider a method for obtaining information on polarization of astronomical objects radiation at diffraction limited resolution - differential speckle polarimetry. As an observable we propose to use averaged cross spectrum of two…

In this work we derive analytic expressions and numerical recipes for finding the effective observed position of sources close enough on sky that their Point Spread Functions (PSF), modelled as Gaussian profiles, overlap. In particularly we…

We present a comprehensive characterization of the on-orbit imaging performance of the three telescopes on board the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE). Each telescope comprises a Wolter-I mirror module assembly and a Gas Pixel…