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Suzaku Guest Observer Facility

XIS+XRT Responses for Simulations: Cycle 10 Versions


Released on 2013 September 3

The XIS and XRT teams have released a set of response files that are suitable for the preparation of AO-10 proposals. These files are all based on the projected performance of the instrument at the middle of the AO-10 period (2015 August 1).

Files can be obtained individually following the links below, or collectively by downloading this gzipped tar file containing all 10.

There are two operational units of XIS with a frontside illuminated (FI) CCD, and one unit (XIS1) with a backside illuminated (BI) CCD. We provide an RMF and an ARF for the BI CCD and those for FI CCDs separately.

The ARF files include the transmission of the thermal shield, the XRT-I effective area, and the loss of the low-energy efficiency due to the OBF contaminants. The loss of the detector area by the calibration source masking, dead rows due to the spaced-row charge injection, and the permanent area discrimination of a part of the XIS0 are taken into account.

We have prepared two cases: a point source observed at the XIS nominal pointing position, and for a circular flat field sky with a 20' radius. The XIS RMF includes the transmission of the optical blocking filter (OBF) and the quantum efficiency of the CCD.

This release consists of the following 10 files.

  • XIS RMF:

  • XRT-I/XIS ARF: These ARF files are for a point source observed at the XIS nominal position; the effective area is for a circular region with a 6 mm (4.34 arcmin) radius.

    These ARF files are for X-ray events detected over the entire XIS field of view (17'x17') emitted by a circular flat field sky with a 20' radius. For convenience, we have scaled down the effective area by the solid angle of the assumed flat field. Therefore, the unit of SPECRESP is cm2str for these files.

  • Small versions: For convenience, we also provide a set of combined (.rsp, or .rmf x .arf) files that are compressed using variable energy and channel binnings. For many targets, the compression should speed up simulations without adversely affecting the accuracy.

For the FI CCDs, please note that we have summed the responses of XIS0 and XIS3 in the .arf and .rsp files.

For simulation of relatively faint point sources, these responses can be used with the blank sky spectra. For some applications, it may be important to consider the night earth data, containing the particle (but not the cosmic X-ray) background.


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This file was last modified on Tuesday, 01-Oct-2019 16:25:52 EDT

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