ixpesim interface

Warning

This section deals with a piece of software that is not publicly distributed, and is likely not of general interest—and yet is kept here for the sake of IXPE collaborators, that do have access to full detector simulation.

If you have never heard about it, ixpesim (a C++ application living in the gdpsw repository) is the IXPE full detector simulation based on the Geant4 framework.

ixpesim is fundamentally different from ixpeobssim, in that it follows the impinging photons one at a time, simulating the interaction with the detector at a microscopic level. As such, it provides a much richer information (e.g., real track images, with all the associated topological information), well beyond the ultimate capabilities of ixpeobssim, due to the fact that the latter only operates on a top-level description of the instrument (the response functions). It goes without saying, this does not come at no cost, and generating events with ixpesim is about 1000 times slower than the fast-simulation counterpart—while ixpeobssim can throw a million events in a few seconds, it takes an hour or so to ixpesim to achieve the same thing.

Note

Added in version 16.13.0: Over the years the inter-operation between ixpeobssim and ixpesim has improved at the point that it is now possible to simulate a simple celestial point source in ixpesim and feed the output back in to XSPEC for a fully-fledged spectro-polarimetric fitting.

Added in version 19.0.0: This is the first version with partial support of the concept of photon lists, i.e., list of photon energies, times and coordinates at the top of the Be window that can be fed into ixpesim to simulate arbitrary source models. Note this new functionality requires ixpesim version 13.6.0 or later.

Added in version 21.3.0: This version saw a complete refactoring of the photon list mechanism, and it is the first in which the latter can be considered fully functional, including the projection of the photon direction in the sky, with vignetting and dithering fully taken into account. This version requires ixpesim version 13.10.0 or later.

The basic work-flow for the inter-operation of ixpeobssim and ixpesim reads basically as follows:

  • create a custom spectrum or, even better, a photon list to be fed into ixpesim;

  • run a simulation within ixpesim;

  • reconstruct the simulation with ixperecon;

  • process the ixpesim output with xpsimfmt to make it compatible with XSPEC;

  • feed all the ingredients in XSPEC for the spectro-polarimetic fit.

The various steps are further described in the remaining of this section.

Custom spectra

ixpesim was mainly developed to support the characterization, test, and calibration of the IXPE detector units, and, as such, is limited in scope to the simulation of the gas pixel detectors at the focal plane of the instrument—the simulation flow starts right before the Berillium entrance window.

Interestingly enough, ixpesim supports the use of custom input spectra in the form of simple, two-column text files (one line per energy, the overall normalization being irrelevant). This allows to incorporate the effect of all the elements upstream the GPD (i.e., the mirrors and the UV filter) in such custom spectra.

Warning

Admittedly, the flexibility of ixpesim in simulating celestial sources is limited—there are no real handles for the source morphology beyond a Gaussian beam, and the program is limited to energy-independent polarization degree and angle. This is, nonetheless, enough to perform a spectro-polarimetric fit within XSPEC. For more advanced applications, the use of photon lists is the obvious way to go.

ixpeobssim provides the capability of creating arbitrary custom spectra to be fed into ixpesim for simulating power-law sources, including the effect of the galactic absorption with an arbitrary H column density, through the xpsimspec application.

xpsimspec creates the convolution of:

  • the intrinsic source spectrum;

  • the galactic absorption;

  • the mirror effective area;

  • the transparency of the UV filter;

  • the effect of the contaminants in the Be windows—which are accounted for in the response functions shipped with ixpeobssim, but are not simluated in ixpesim.

The output is a text file that can be used directly as a custom spectrum in ixpesim.

Photon lists

Since version 19.0.0 (but you are strongly encouraged to upgrade to version 21.3.0 or later, if you are playing this game) ixpeobssim provides the xpphotonlist application, that allows to generate a list of photon definitions (in the form of a FITS file) that can then be fed into ixpesim to be propagated through the detector and turned into a list of actual photo-electron tracks for the events triggering the detector.

Warning

The photon list mechanism is a relatively new feature that should be considered in beta testing mode. Since it has the potential for becoming our final weapon when it comes to detailed simulations of celestial sources, it is very important to proceed with all the necessary tests. You are welcome to try it and you are kindly encouraged to report as soon as possible any issue you might run into.

The photon lists contain all the relevant information about the photons impinging on the Be window of the GPD, i.e., time, energy, position and polarization degree and angle. The full format specification is as follows.

Header keywords

  • TELESCOP: Telescope name

  • INSTRUME: Instrument name

  • DETNAM: Name of the logical detector unit

  • DET_ID: Name of the physical detector unit

  • TSTART: Observation start time in MET

  • TSTOP: Observation end time in MET

  • DATE-OBS: Observation start datetime

  • DATE-END: Observation end datetime

  • TELAPSE: TSTOP-TSTART

  • TIMESYS: Time system

  • TIMEUNIT: Time units

  • TIMEREF: Time reference

  • MJDREFI: MJD ref day 01 Jan 2017 00:00:00 UTC

  • MJDREFF: Frac part of MJD ref (32.184secs+37leapsecs)

  • TIMEZERO: Zero time

  • ONTIME: On source time

  • LIVETIME: On source time corrected for dead time

  • DEADC: Dead time correction

  • DEADAPP: Has DEADC been applied to data

  • RA_OBJ: [deg] R.A. Object

  • DEC_OBJ: [deg] Dec Object

  • RA_PNT: [deg] RA pointing

  • DEC_PNT: [deg] Dec pointing

  • OBJECT: Name of observed object

Columns

  • SEC (J): Integral part of event time (MET) [s]

  • MICROSEC (J): Fractional part of event time (MET) [us]

  • TIME (D): Event time in seconds (MET) [s]

  • ENERGY (E): Event energy in keV [keV]

  • RA (E): Right Ascension of the photon [deg]

  • DEC (E): Declination of the photon [deg]

  • DETX (E): X position at the top of the Be window (GPD frame) [mm]

  • DETY (E): Y position at the top of the Be window (GPD frame) [mm]

  • POL_DEG (E): Polarization degree []

  • POL_ANG (E): Polarization angle [rad]

  • SRC_ID (I): Monte Carlo source identifier [None]

The format is consistent with that expected with the full rewrite of the particle source class made specifically for this purpose in ixpesim, and requires gpdsw version 13.10.0 or later.

Note

Since not all the photons impinging on the Be window make it to the active gas volume and are absorbed, generating a photoelectron track with enough energy to trigger the detector, you should expect the event list in output from ixpesim to be significantly shorter than the photon list that is given as an input. The exact ratio depends on the energy spectrum of the source. As a rule of thumb, for a typical celestial source you should expect about 10% of the photons to generate a track.

As of ixpeobssim version 21.3.0 the photon list FITS files include by default a copy of the SC_DATA binary table that is used downstream to project the photons back in the sky taking into account the dithering of the observatory.

Fitting ixpesim data sets

The ixpesim output files are not readily usable in XSPEC. Beyond a few missing header keywords, the main problem is that the measured energy is expressed in (un-calibrated) PHA counts, and there is no concept of pulse invariant.

In real life level-1 files are processed by a series of tools, correcting for a number of effects (gain non-uniformity, secular gain variations, temperature effects, and charging). For simulated data we can use the same model that is used at the generation stage of the response functions.

xpsimfmt performs all the steps that are necessary to close the loop and have the ixpesim output inter-operate correctly with all the analysis tools shipped with ixpeobssim—namely:

  • add some relevant keywords in the proper headers;

  • add the PI, Q, U, RA, DEC, X, Y, and W_MOM columns in the EVENTS extension.

Warning

For the process to round-trip correctly, one should make sure that all the relevant adjustable simulation parameters (e.g., the GEM gain) are strictly the same as those used in the data sets upon which the response functions are based.

Care should be taken when simulating events with an ixpesim version different from that used for the generation of the response functions.

An exemplary use case

Below is some sample code that you might use to generate an ixpesim simulation of an arbitrarily complex source model, suitable for a spectro-polarimetric fit in XSPEC.

# Create the photon list to be fed into ixpesim. Be careful to the version of
# the IRF you are using, because you will need a non-diagonal response matrix.
# If you don't know what to do, use the default ``ixpe_mc_v9``
xpphotonlist.py --config path/to/srcmodel.py \
                --duration 5000\
                --irfname "ixpe:obssim:v10"

# Run the ixpesim simulation. A few notes:
# - if you want to simulate the three DUs, you will have to run them separately
# - to process the entire photon list, use a very large number for the -n switch
# - make sure you have the pressure right for the DU you are targeting.
#
# For version 9 of the IRFs, the asymtotic pressure values read:
# GPD_DME_ASYMPTOTIC_PRESSURE_DICT = {1: 645., 2: 631., 3: 638.}
ixpesim --src-photon-list ~/ixpeobssimdata/srcmodel_du1_photon_list.fits \
        --output-file ~/ixpeobssimdata/srcmodel_ixpesim_du1.fits \
        -n 1000000
        --dme-pressure 645.

# Run the event reconstruction.
ixperecon ~/ixpeobssimdata/srcmodel_ixpesim_du1.fits

# add the missing columns for the use in XSPEC
xpsimfmt.py ~/ixpeobssimdata/srcmodel_ixpesim_du1_recon.fits

# And if you want a reference ``ixpeobssim`` simulation to compare with...
xpobssim.py --config path/to/srcmodel.py \
            --duration 5000 \
            --deadtime 0. \
            --irfname ixpe_mc_v9

From this point on you should be able to bin the data and fit them in XSPEC as usual.