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

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。

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.