DETERMINATION OF THE POINT-SPREAD FUNCTION FOR THE FERMI LARGE AREA TELESCOPE FROM ON-ORBIT DATA AND LIMITS ON PAIR HALOS OF ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEI

Abstract

The Large Area Telescope (LAT) on the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is a pair-conversion telescope designed to detect photons with energies from approximate to 20 MeV to > 300 GeV. The pre-launch response functions of the LAT were determined through extensive Monte Carlo simulations and beam tests. The point-spread function (PSF) characterizing the angular distribution of reconstructed photons as a function of energy and geometry in the detector is determined here from two years of on-orbit data by examining the distributions of gamma rays from pulsars and active galactic nuclei (AGNs). Above 3 GeV, the PSF is found to be broader than the pre-launch PSF. We checked for dependence of the PSF on the class of gamma-ray source and observation epoch and found none. We also investigated several possible spatial models for pair-halo emission around BL Lac AGNs. We found no evidence for a component with spatial extension larger than the PSF and set upper limits on the amplitude of halo emission in stacked images of low-and high-redshift BL Lac AGNs and the TeV blazars 1ES0229 + 200 and 1ES0347-121.


Tutti gli autori

  • LOPARCO F.;GIORDANO F.;SPINELLI P.;FUSCO P.;RAINO' S.

Titolo volume/Rivista

Non Disponibile


Anno di pubblicazione

2013

ISSN

0004-637X

ISBN

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Numero di citazioni Wos

43

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Settori ERC

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