Calibration of the Rossi X-Ray Timing Explorer Proportional Counter Array

By K. Jahoda, C. Markwardt, Y. Radeva, A. Rots, M. Stark, J. Swank, T. Strohmayer, Will Zhang. 2005

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We present the calibration and background model for the Proportional Counter Array on board the Rossi X-Ray Timing Explorer. The energy calibration is systematics-limited below 10 keV, with deviations from a power-law fit to the Crab Nebula plus pulsar of less than 1%. Unmodeled variations in the instrumental background amount to less than 2% of the observed background below 10 keV and less than 1% between 10 and 20 keV. Individual photon arrival times are accurate to 4.4 μs at all times during the mission and to 2.5 μs after 1997 April 29. The peak pointing direction of the five collimators is known to a precision of a few arcseconds.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e78660310331444aa6df0375e9df6f034cced16a

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Citations in the corpus

First X-ray-based statistical tests for clumpy-torus models: eclipse events from 230 years of monitoring of Seyfert AGN (2014, methodology): “However, the unmodeled residual variance in the background is on the order of 1–2 per cent (Jahoda et al. 2006), and for spectra with exposure times higher than ∼ 10 − 30 ks, the Poissonian errors may be overestimates.”
Coded-aperture imaging systems: Past, present and future development - A review (2016, background): “All three types of radiation mentioned can be detected using different gas filled tubes, which are sensitive to a specific type [1, 2]; examples are ionisation chambers, proportional counters and Geiger-Mueller counters.”
The Spin of the Near-Extreme Kerr Black Hole GRS 1915+105 (2006, methodology): “As in S06, we again found it necessary to correct the effective area of the PCA despite a recent official correction (Jahoda et al. 2006), which was made using a nominal and approximate spectrum of the Crab nebula (Zombeck et al. 1990).”
An Empirical Background Model for the NICER X-Ray Timing Instrument (2021, methodology): “The left panel combines data from Observation IDs and Mission Elapse Times (MET) as follows: 1012080149 (MET 132410965–132411942), 1012060207 (MET 152618492–152619765), and 1012020193 (MET 151521605–15152292).”
The 'universal' radio/X-ray flux correlation : the case study of the black hole GX 339-4 (2012, methodology): “We performed spectral analysis using data from the Proportional Counter Array (PCA, Jahoda et al. 2006) and the High Energy X-ray Timing Experiment (HEXTE, Rothschild et al. 1998) from observations when GX 339−4 was in the hard state.”
THE CONSTANT INNER-DISK RADIUS OF LMC X-3: A BASIS FOR MEASURING BLACK HOLE SPIN (2010, methodology): “Count rates have been renormalized to correct for detector dead time, and a systematic error of 1% has been included to account for uncertainty in the instrumental response (Jahoda et al. 2006).”
Radiatively efficient accreting black holes in the hard state: the case study of H1743-322 (2011, methodology): “Spectra were extracted from the Proportional Counter Array (PCA; Jahoda et al. 2006) in the 3–25 keV range.”
FLARING BEHAVIOR OF THE QUASAR 3C 454.3 ACROSS THE ELECTROMAGNETIC SPECTRUM (2010, methodology): “◦52 to the SE of 3C 454.3; at this offset position, the PCA collimator efficiency is 45% (Jahoda et al. 2006); we corrected for this when generating the PCA response matrices (see below).”
Evaluating Spectral Models and the X-Ray States of Neutron Star X-Ray Transients (2007, methodology): “Finally, we applied systematic errors of 0.8% for PCA channel 0–39 (about below 18 keV) and 2% for PCA channel 40–128 (Kreykenbohm et al. 2004; Jahoda et al. 2006).”
Neutron star mass and radius measurements from atmospheric model fits to X-ray burst cooling tail spectra (2017, methodology): “The mock data is created to resemble the observations from NASA’s RXTE Proportional Counter Array (PCA) (Jahoda et al. 2006).”
Fast infrared variability from a relativistic jet in GX 339-4 (2010, methodology): “Both datasets have an absolute time accuracy better than the time resolution used here: ISAAC data have a timing accuracy of about 10 ms (the readout time), while RXTE data have a timing accuracy of 2.5 µs (Jahoda et al. 2006).”
Modeling and Reproducibility of Suzaku HXD PIN/GSO Background (2009, methodology): “The background models of the Ginga LAC and the RXTE PCA are based on this method (Hayashida et al. 1989; Jahoda et al. 2006).”
The spin of the black hole microquasar XTE J1550−564 via the continuum-fitting and Fe-line methods (2010, methodology): “7).2 A linear collimator correction (assuming an ideal 1◦ triangular response; Jahoda et al. 2006) has been applied to the data set to account for a series of offsets in the PCA pointing.”