Tuesday, January 24, 2012

1201.4851 (B. Lott et al.)

An adaptive-binning method for generating constant-uncertainty/constant-significance light curves with Fermi-LAT data    [PDF]

B. Lott, L. Escande, S. Larsson, J. Ballet
We present a method enabling the creation of constant-uncertainty/constant-significance light curves with the data of the Fermi-Large Area Telescope (LAT). The adaptive-binning method enables more information to be encapsulated within the light curve than with the fixed-binning method. Although primarily developed for blazar studies, it can be applied to any sources. This method allows the starting and ending times of each interval to be calculated in a simple and quick way during a first step. The reported mean flux and spectral index (assuming the spectrum is a power-law distribution) in the interval are calculated via the standard LAT analysis during a second step. The absence of major caveats associated with this method has been established by means of Monte-Carlo simulations. We present the performance of this method in determining duty cycles as well as power-density spectra relative to the traditional fixed-binning method.
View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1201.4851

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