ximpol: an X-ray polarimetry simulation framework

ximpol is a simulation framework specifically developed for X-ray polarimetric applications, based on the Python programming language and the SciPy stack. It is not tied to any specific mission or instrument design and is meant to produce fast and yet realistic observation-simulations, given as basic inputs:

  • an arbitrary source model including morphological, temporal, spectral and polarimetric information;
  • the response functions of the detector under study, i.e., the effective area, the energy dispersion, the point-spread function and the modulation factor.

The format of the response files is OGIP compliant, and the framework has the capability of producing output files that can be directly fed into the standard visualization and analysis tools used by the X-ray community, including XSPEC—which make it a useful tool not only for simulating physical systems, but also to develop and test end-to-end analysis chains.

If you are wondering what this is all about, you might want to start off by taking a look at our showcase.

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