X-ray spectral fitting methods workshop

When: 24-25. September 2019
Where: Max Planck Institute for extraterrestrial Physics, Garching, Germany
Who: 44 participants. Speakers: Johannes Buchner, J Michael Burgess, Joern Wilms, Jeremy Sanders, Konrad Dennerl

Video recordings, Slides & Links

The full workshop is available on YouTube: Part I Part II Part III.
Use the Youtube description text to jump to specific talks.

wilms_linear.pdf: X-ray astronomy basics: motivation, mirrors & detectors, (linear) data model, ARF&RMF, pile-up, forward-folding.
buchner.pdf: Welcome, basic count statistics, Cash/Chi², Backgrounds, Likelihoods, Bayes theorem, Parameter space exploration algorithms (local and global optimizers, MCMC, nested sampling), best fit distributions, posterior distributions, model comparison methods, simulations for calibrating decisions, low-count spectra, practical pointers
wilms_minimization.pdf: Understanding Levenberg-Marquardt Minimization.
burgess.pdf: Backgrounds (from fits, gaussian, poisson, per-bin), Significance/signal-to-noise ratios, multi-wavelength fits, likelihood ratios, Wilks' theorem, component detection, chi² & degrees of freedom, posterior predictive checks, residuals, stacking data vs information, hierarchical models.
wilms_optimal_binning.pdf: Optimal binning of RMFs (Kaastra & Bleeker, 2016, A&A 587, A151)
sanders.pdf: X-ray spectral fitting in 2D
dennerl.pdf: Calibration uncertainties, Randomization, PHA to PI

We thank: