Northwestern Events Calendar

Oct
11
2019

Colloquium: Henric Krawczynski: First Results from the X-Calibur Hard X-Ray Polarimetry Experiment

When: Friday, October 11, 2019
4:00 PM - 5:00 PM CT

Where: Technological Institute, L211, 2145 Sheridan Road, Evanston, IL 60208 map it

Audience: Faculty/Staff - Student - Public - Post Docs/Docs - Graduate Students

Contact: Yassaman   (847) 491-7650

Group: Physics and Astronomy Colloquia

Category: Academic

Description:

Hard X-ray polarimetric observations of neutron stars, magnetars, and mass accreting black holes can give us qualitatively new information about the geometry and properties of the X-ray emission regions, and can test fundamental physics laws in regimes that cannot be probed in terrestrial laboratories. In this talk, I will present first results from the X-Calibur hard X-ray polarimetry mission. The experiment was flown end of December 2018 for a short two-day high-altitude balloon flight from McMurdo (Antarctica). I will report here on the  X-Calibur observations of the accreting pulsar GX 301-2, giving us the first observational constraints on the linear polarization properties of the emission in a particularly interesting energy band where plasma and vacuum birefringence strongly impact the net polarization. I will close by describing our plans for longer follow-up flights with an improved science payload in 2021, 2022 and 2024.

Seminar Speaker: Henric Krawczynski, WUSTL

 Host: Tchekhovskoy

Keywords: Physics, Astronomy, Seminar, Colloquium

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