Collaborative Research: Dust Echo Tomography: New Diagnostics for Galactic Dust and Magnetic Fields

合作研究：尘埃回波断层扫描：银河尘埃和磁场的新诊断

• 批准号: 2205918
• 负责人: Lia Corrales
• 金额: $ 3.61万
• 依托单位: Regents of the University of Michigan - Ann Arbor
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-09-01 至 2025-08-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2205918&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Dust; Echo; Tomography

Black holes and neutron stars in the plane of our Galaxy are known to emit flashes of X-rays. When these X-rays travel through the Galaxy, they can bounce off interstellar dust particles, creating a ring-like echo surrounding the source. Over the past decade, the discovery of several such echoes has opened a new field of study called “X-ray Dust Tomography”. The study of these echoes provides new insights into the properties of interstellar dust, which is a key building block of stars and planets. The goal of this project is to advance the understanding of X-ray dust echoes and to connect them with observations by optical and radio telescopes. Investigator Heinz will build on previous experience with life-long learning programs and develop a 20-hour public exploration series on multi-messenger astronomy. Heinz plans to film the new lectures and make them available online as a self-contained web course. The investigators will develop, test, optimize, and publish a constrained, joint 2-dimensional deconvolution algorithm that will allow the joint analysis of an arbitrary number of observations of dust echoes with arbitrary signal-to-noise. The algorithm will be applicable to a wide range of echo phenomena. The work will enable significantly more sensitive analysis of past echoes and more flexible and sensitive future observations. The investigators we will further develop a new method to measure grain alignment and thus magnetic field orientation from X-ray dust echoes and infra-red extinction maps of dust clouds.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

我们银河系平面上的黑洞和中子星会发出X射线。当这些X射线穿过银河系时，它们会被星际尘埃颗粒反弹，在源周围产生环状回波。在过去的十年中，几个这样的回声的发现开辟了一个新的研究领域，称为“X射线尘埃断层扫描”。对这些回波的研究为星际尘埃的性质提供了新的见解，星际尘埃是恒星和行星的关键组成部分。该项目的目标是促进对X射线尘埃回波的理解，并将其与光学和射电望远镜的观测结果联系起来。研究员海因茨将在以往终身学习计划的基础上，开发一个20小时的多信使天文学公共探索系列。海因茨计划将新的讲座拍摄下来，并将其作为一个独立的网络课程在网上提供。研究人员将开发、测试、优化并发布一种约束的联合二维反卷积算法，该算法将允许对任意数量的尘埃回波观测结果进行联合分析，并具有任意信噪比。该算法将适用于广泛的回波现象。这项工作将使过去的回声和更灵活和敏感的未来观测更敏感的分析。研究人员将进一步开发一种新的方法来测量颗粒排列，从而从X射线尘埃回波和尘埃云的红外消光图中测量磁场方向。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。