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

University Of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison WI

Investigators

Abstract

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.