XISSIMARFGEN: A Ray-Tracing-Based ARF Generator

Xissimarfgen is a ray-tracing based generator of ancillary response files (ARFs) for the Suzaku XIS. It is a powerful tool, which however has far more parameters and modes of usage than a typical guest observer would need (or want to know about). The XIS team intends to release a simpler tool that nevertheless meets the need of the majority of guest observers in the near future. In the mean time, users should run xissimarfgen to:

Generate ARFs that include the effects of contaminant build-up.
Generate ARFs for extended sources.

In addition, a simple calculator, xiscontamicalc, is available to estimate the amount of contaminant for a given detector location and time.

Read about xiscontamicalc.

Also note that the redistribution matrix part of the response (RMF) should be generated using xisrmfgen.

Notes on using xisrmfgen

Since xissimarfgen calculates ARFs through Monte-Carlo simulations (it ray-traces X-ray photons through Suzaku XRT and XIS and counting the number of events detected in the user-defined extraction regions), users need to simulate a sufficient number of photons to limit the statistical errors to an acceptable level.

Xissimarfgen and related tools are included in the HEAsoft package. See the HEAsoft home page for installation. For further details, users should refer to the paper by Ishisaki et al. in the Publication of the Astronomical Society of Japan (Ishisaki et al. 2007, PASJ, 59, 113, astroph/0610118).

The current release (HEAsoft 6.3.0) can mask areas with bad pixels and columns, rows with or around charge injection rows etc. with the "pixq_and" and "pixq_eql" options. It does not take into account the scattering process on the mirrors (however, the effective area calcualtions are only minimally affected).

We explain the usage of xissimarfgen (ver. 2007-07-16) in the following pages:

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This file was last modified on Wednesday, 26-Sep-2007 16:56:07 EDT