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 27 to June 6, 2025
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.
Week 1
| Tues, May 27 | Wed, May 28 | Thurs, May 29 | Fri, May 30 | Sat, May 31 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8:00 | Breakfast | Breakfast | Breakfast | Breakfast | Breakfast |
| 9:00 | Welcome and Introductions - Liz+ Please complete the First Day Survey | Intro to the Large Area Telescope - Judy | Science with Gamma-ray Transients - Rachel | Gamma-ray Binaries - Jamie | Dark Matter - Maíra Dutra |
| 10:00 | Overview of the Fermi Mission - Judy Racusin | Intro to the Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (canva) - Rachel Hamburg | Neutron Stars I - Matthew Baring | Gamma-ray Diffuse Emission - Peter Marinos | How to write excellent proposals - Andrea Prestwich |
| 11:00 | Break | Break | Break | Break (Photo!) | Break |
| 11:30 | Fermi Survey Strategy - Joe Eggen Gamma-ray Astrophysics and Radiation Processes Basics - Liz | Statistics for Gamma-ray Analysis - Liz See 2023 lecture from Matthew Kerr for a great example using baguettes. Steve Fegan 's with statistical examples in python: - errors_poisson.py | Supernova Remnants - Miltiadis Michailidis | Student Talks | Student Talks |
| 12:30 | Lunch | Lunch | Lunch | Lunch | Lunch |
| 1:30 | Getting started with Fermi: Tools and Resources - Joe Eggen Data Quicklook - Joe E. | Getting Started with LAT Analysis First run this command in your FermiBottle terminal in /shared
| Next Steps for LAT Analysis | Transient Analysis in GBM and LAT | Evaluating Results and Fitting Spectra Useful examples: FindSource notebook: Add a new source to the ROI model; test for detection and position. Curvature Test notebook compares two spectral fits. This notebook explains details of the livetime and exposure used in the likelihood analysis. |
| 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 2 | Tues, June 3 | Wed, June 4 | Thurs, June 5 | Fri, June 6 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8:00 | Breakfast | Breakfast | Breakfast | Breakfast | Breakfast |
| 9:00 | Neutron Stars II - Matthew | Gamma-ray blazar observations - Amy Furniss | Ground-based Gamma-ray Astronomy - Amy Furniss | Simulations for High Energy Astrophysics - Haocheng | Pack up. Final Wrap-up! Project Results and Feedback at 9:30. |
| 10:00 | Imposter Syndrome Workshop (90 min) | Modeling Blazar Jets I - Haocheng Zhang | Modeling Blazar Jets II - Haocheng | Future Gamma-Ray Topics and Telescopes | Finish wrap up. Box lunch available for shuttles. |
| 11:00 | Break | Break | Break | Break | Break |
| 11:30 | Student Talks (30 min) | Student Talks | |||
| 12:30 | Lunch | Lunch | Lunch | Lunch | Lunch |
| 1:30 | Lightcurve Workshop The Fermi LAT Lightcurve Repository Usage Notes and Caveats for LCR Lightcurve tool in fermipy example (binned likelihood) Paper on adaptive binning method (and documentation for a script made available by B. Lott) | Free Afternoon | Spatially Extended Analysis. https://fermi.gsfc.nasa.gov/ssc/dev/tutorials/Likelihood_rcw103.tgz. https://fermi.gsfc.nasa.gov/ssc/dev/tutorials/Likelihood_rxj1713.tgz | ||
| 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 | |
| BBQ @ 7PM |
Student Talks and 1 Slide Summary Schedule
| Fri. May 30 | |
| Oscar Wistemar | Radiation-mediated shocks in gamma-ray burst photospheres seen by Fermi |
| Koothodil Abhijith Augustine | Anti-correlation between Flux and Photon Index of Hard X-ray Emission from The Crab |
Makenzie E. Wortley | Time-resolved spectral analysis of bright collapsar and extended-emission merger GRBs (~1 slide) |
| Victor Guedes |
| Sat. May 31 | |
| Alex Lange | |
| Seonghyeon Yu | |
Svanik Tandon | Gamma-Ray and AntiMatter Survey (GRAMS) Experiment |
| Renée Kirk | Indirect search for WIMP dark matter ~1 slide |
| Mon. June 2 | |
| Kyle D. Neumann | X-ray Catalog of Likely Counterparts to 4FGL-DR4 Unassociated Gamma-ray Sources |
| Mahsa Najafi |
| Tue. June 3 | |
| Sara Capecchiacci | |
| Francesco Casini | |
| Nilanjana Ghosh | |
Fausto Casaburo | ~1 slide |
| Wed. June 4 | |
| Samantha López | Multiwavelength analysis of the blazar VER J0521+211 during the flare of February 25, 2020. |
| Eva M. Palafox | Beyond the Core: Unveiling Multiple Gamma-Ray Production Zones in Blazar 3C 454.3 |
Simon Filbert | VERITAS Neutrino Follow Up |
Thurs. June 5 | |
| Anna Luashvili | What do the brightest high energy activity states of 3C 279 tell us about AGN jet physics? |
Kavic Kumar | Investigating the Multi-wavelength Photon and Neutrino Correlation in NGC 4151 |
Zhen Xie | Analysis of the gravitational wave background using gamma-ray pulsar timing arrays with next-generation detectors |
| Nicki Bond | ~1 slide |
Group Photos
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 FSSC's Data Analysis section.
Interesting software 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
- 3rd LAT Pulsar Catalog- includes nearly 300 pulsars
- 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
- ASI SPace Science Data (SSDC) has an archive of data and tools for multiwavelength studies that include gamma rays.
- Cole Miller's lectures on 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
- On YAML (yml files)
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