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

我们知道银河系平面上的黑洞和中子星会发出x射线闪光。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声。在过去的十年里，几个这样的回声的发现开辟了一个新的研究领域，叫做“x射线尘埃断层扫描”。对这些回声的研究提供了对星际尘埃特性的新见解，星际尘埃是恒星和行星的关键组成部分。该项目的目标是推进对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联系起来。海因茨研究员将以以往终身学习项目的经验为基础，开发一个20小时的多信使天文学公共探索系列。亨氏计划将这些新课程拍摄下来，作为一个独立的网络课程放到网上。研究人员将开发、测试、优化并发布一种受限的联合二维反卷积算法，该算法将允许对任意数量的具有任意信噪比的尘埃回波观测进行联合分析。该算法将适用于广泛的回波现象。这项工作将使过去的回波分析更加灵敏，未来的观测更加灵活和灵敏。研究人员将进一步开发一种新方法，通过x射线尘埃回波和尘埃云的红外消光图来测量颗粒排列，从而测量磁场方向。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，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。

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.