Happy 15th Launch Anniversary!
The Fermi Summer School emphasizes the analysis of data from the Fermi instruments through lectures and hands-on workshops. Students spend time working directly with experts in instrumentation, analysis, theory and modeling to develop and extend their own research projects. Topics cover much of the gamma-ray band ranging from keV-MeV transients seen with Fermi's GBM to the highest energies observed by the LAT and the very high energies observed by ground-based gamma-ray telescopes. This year's school will be held at the University of Delaware Conference Center in Lewes, Delaware, from May 30 to June 9, 2023.
Material will be aimed at graduate students and post-doctoral researchers. Topics will include particle acceleration and gamma-ray production mechanisms; space-based and ground-based gamma-ray instrumentation; spectral, spatial, and time-based analysis of gamma-ray data; modeling and interpretation of gamma-ray data; and astrophysical source classes such as AGN, GRBs, Galactic pulsars and binary systems, supernova remnants, and pulsar wind nebulae as well as searches for dark matter and new physics.
The software necessary for the tutorials (such as the Fermitools) are distributed in the FermiBottle Docker Container, a fully-functional, self-contained analysis environment. Please go through the Summer School Checklist to make sure the container is functioning correctly.
On this page
Schedule
Go directly to Week 1 or Week 2. All times are in Eastern Daylight Time (UTC−04:00).
See our Code of Conduct and COVID-19 guidelines.
Week 1
| Tues, May 30 | Wed, May 31 | Thurs, June 1 | Fri, June 2 | Sat, June 3 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8:00 | Breakfast | Breakfast | Breakfast | Breakfast | Breakfast |
| 9:00 | Welcome and Introductions - Liz | Intro to Fermi LAT - Liz | Intro to Fermi GBM - Cori Fletcher | GBM Science - Cori | Dark Matter - Tim |
| 10:00 | Intro to the Fermi Mission and Sky - Liz Hays | Active Galactic Nuclei - Manel Errando | Resources for Impostor Syndrome (with much gratitude to Amy Furniss) | Diffuse Gamma Rays - Tim Linden | Polarization - Manel |
| 11:00 | Break | Break | Break | Break (Photo!) | Break |
| 11:30 | Intro to Maximum Likelihood - Matthew Kerr | PeVatrons - Henrike Fleischhack | Student Talks / 1 Slide Summaries | ||
| 12:30 | Lunch | Lunch | Lunch | Lunch | Lunch |
| 1:30 | Getting started with Fermi: Tools and Resources - Joe Eggen, Joe Asercion, Alex Reustle, Nestor Mirabal (remote), Don Horner (remote) | Getting Started with Likelihood Analysis - Liz, Joe, Matthew fermi-summer-school Github repository - See README file for instructions to download files for the analysis | Next Steps with Likelihood - Liz | Advanced Likelihood/Student Projects Working with a software repository: git basics - Henrike FindSource notebook: Example of adding a source to the LAT catalog model. Test for a detection and locate a new source. | Time domain surveys - Special guests Advanced Tutorials: Light Curves and the LAT Light Curve Repository / Student Projects Curvature Test Example - compares 2 spectral fits of the 3C279 example from Wednesday. |
| 4:45 | End of the Day Tag-up | End of the Day Tag-up | End of the Day Tag-up | End of the Day Tag-up | End of the Day Tag-up |
| Bike rental pick-up - leave by 4:30 | Crab Feast |
Week 2
| Mon, June 5 | Tues, June 6 | Wed, June 7 | Thurs, June 8 | Fri, June 9 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8:00 | Breakfast | Breakfast | Breakfast | Breakfast | Breakfast |
| 9:00 | The Sun - Melissa | Gamma-ray Bursts II - Peter | Advanced LAT - Melissa | 9:00 -9:30 Pack up. Feedback Form | |
| 10:00 | GBM Analysis Tutorial - Peter | The Crab - Liz | Gamma-ray Binaries Jamie | Future science with gamma rays - Judy/Liz | |
| 11:00 | Break | Break | Break | Break | Break |
| 11:30 | Student Talks / 1 Slide Summaries | Student Talks / 1 Slide Summaries | Complete packing up and return bikes. | ||
| 12:30 | Lunch | Lunch | Lunch | Lunch | Lunch |
| 1:30 | MW transients and joint GBM/LAT Spectral Analysis - Judy | Free Afternoon | Extended source fitting with LAT data (simple, advanced NBs) - Jordan Eagle Reminders about profile likelihood and errors | Advanced topics (Systematics and Checks?) Finding Information about high-energy transients - Judy GCN - Judy Student Projects | |
| 4:45 | End of the Day Tag-up | End of the Day Tag-up | End of the Day Tag-up | ||
| Sunset cruise |
Student Talks and 1 Slide Summary Schedule
Friday, June 2
Claire Hinrichs - Multi-wavelength Observations of a Long-duration Flare from BL Lacertae
Pazit Rabinowitz - Search for TeV emission from unbiased survey of high-frequency-peaked BL Lacs
Stephen Kerby - The Pulsars and Blazars of the Fermi Unassociated Sources
Saturday, June 3
Tej Chand - Inverse Compton emission from relativistic particles accelerated at shear layers in relativistic jets
Hui Yang - Classification of 4FGL sources with CSCv2 and multi-wavelength surveys
Cristina Fernandez - Search of DM annihilation in Galactic Stellar Streams with the Fermi LAT
Takeba Olbemo - Fermi-LAT and Swift XRT observations of Nova Her 2021
Monday, June 5
Nicolò Cibrario - Machine Learning for the measurement of the Cosmic-Ray Inclusive Electron Spectrum with Fermi Large Area Telescope
DJ Maheso - Pulse fitting of short gamma-ray bursts and the magnetar giant flare, GRB200415A with the Norris function
Romain Maccary - Distributions of energy and peak luminosity of gamma-ray burst pulses with known redshift detected by Fermi/GBM
Paarmita Pandey - Evaluating stellar winds from Young Massive Star Clusters as Cosmic-Ray acceleration sites using Fermi gamma-ray observations
Tuesday, June 6
Mete Uzener - Bursts from Rotation Powered Magnetars Swift J1818.0−1607 and PSR J1846.4−0258
Tamador Khalil - Using machine learning to estimate Fermi GRB redshifts
Lucia Tian - BurstCube: A 6U Cubesat for detecting gravitational wave counterparts
Hend Hamed - Phase-resolved Spectroscopy of Gamma-ray Pulsars
Wednesday, June 7
Ömer Çoban - Simulations of X-ray Outburst Light Curves of Aql X-1
Ava Myers - BurstCube: A CubeSat for Gravitational Wave Counterparts
Gaetano Di Marco - Simulations of gamma rays propagation in magnetised astrophysical environments
Steven Chen
Thursday, June 8
Özge Keskin - Deep Search for and Investigations of Untriggered Gamma-Ray Transient Events Using Fermi/GBM Data
Kara Whitaker - Searching for Extragalactic TeV sources
Mark Armah - Oxygen abundance in the narrow line region of Seyfert galaxy and the metallicity- luminosity relation
Yu Luo
Supporting Material
- Primary announcements will be sent out via an e-mail list.
- Secondary announcements, interaction between sessions. instructor-student, and student-student communication will be handled via Slack. Instructions on joining the Summer School Slack will be sent to attendees by e-mail.
- This confluence page will be the home for the schedule as well as the presentation and supporting materials.
- There are a number of video tutorials for Fermi data analysis already available. You can also find tutorials posted on the SSC web page Data Analysis area.
- Presentation and material for Josh Wood's presentation on GRB analysis
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NFyfb8gzWwRJiXMJ2h4QuMe32tRcErPp/view?usp=sharing
Interesting repositories for Fermi analysis
- FermiBottle - a fully-functional, self-contained analysis environment used in the Summer School
- Summer School Github Repository containing Jupyter notebooks used during the Summer School
- fermiPy and documentation
Stay up-to-date with the gamma-ray sky
- List of the currently available data products at the FSSC - Catalogs and lightcurve products in addition to links to data archives
- Public List of LAT-Detected Gamma-Ray Pulsars - continuously updated list of confirmed gamma-ray pulsars
- 2nd LAT Pulsar Catalog - covers the first 3 years of data (includes timing models)
- Pulsar ephemerides for published sources - hosted at the FSSC data access website and lists contacts who are timing LAT pulsars in radio
- LAT Gamma-ray Pulsar Timing Models
- Find Fermi publications
- Fermi-LAT publications page
- List of rapid communications from the LAT team
- Table of Fermi GBM gamma-ray bursts
- Fermi Gamma-ray Coordinates Network (GCN) notices
Additional Resources for gamma-ray astronomy and astrostatistics
From the Handbook of X-ray and Gamma-ray Astrophysics:
Source naming schemes and catalogs:
- General considerations
- Most gamma-ray sources are objects outside the solar system
Things to Do in Lewes
- Take the ferry to Cape May.
- Hire kayaks (Don't forget sun screen!).
- If the weather's good, go to the beach! Lewes Beach is fine, or there's a beach on the ocean-side in Cape Henlopen State Park. (Don't forget sun screen!)
- Visit Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge (Don't forget bug repellent)
- Visit the Zwaanendael Museum
- Visit the US Lightship Overfalls (located just off of Pilottown Rd):
- Biking and hiking trails