Earth Occultation Imaging of the Low Energy Gamma-Ray Sky with GBM

TL;DR

This paper introduces IDEOM, a tomographic imaging method leveraging Fermi satellite precession to detect unmodeled gamma-ray sources, expanding the GBM catalog and providing new spectral data for key sources.

Contribution

The paper presents IDEOM, a novel imaging technique that enhances all-sky gamma-ray source detection using Fermi GBM data, reducing systematic errors and identifying new sources.

Findings

Detected 87 sources across energy bands, including 17 new sources.

Generated the first combined spectra for four persistent sources.

Expanded the GBM source catalog with newly identified sources.

Abstract

The Earth Occultation Technique (EOT) has been applied to Fermi's Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) to perform all-sky monitoring for a predetermined catalog of hard X-ray/soft gamma-ray sources. In order to search for sources not in the catalog, thus completing the catalog and reducing a source of systematic error in EOT, an imaging method has been developed -- Imaging with a Differential filter using the Earth Occultation Method (IDEOM). IDEOM is a tomographic imaging method that takes advantage of the orbital precession of the Fermi satellite. Using IDEOM, all-sky reconstructions have been generated for ~sim 4 years of GBM data in the 12-50 keV, 50-100 keV and 100-300 keV energy bands in search of sources otherwise unmodeled by the GBM occultation analysis. IDEOM analysis resulted in the detection of 57 sources in the 12-50 keV energy band, 23 sources in the 50-100 keV energy band, and 7 sources in the 100-300 keV energy band. Seventeen sources were not present in the original GBM-EOT catalog and have now been added. We also present the first joined averaged spectra for four persistent sources detected by GBM using EOT and by the Large Area Telescope (LAT) on Fermi: NGC 1275, 3C 273, Cen A, and the Crab.