The history of recent galactic nucleosynthesis activity can be studied by <br />measurements of the 1.809 MeV gamma-ray line arising from the decay of <br />radioactive 26Al.<br />The COMPTEL telescope aboard the Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory, launched on <br />April 5, 1991, permits for the first time an extensive investigation of the <br />1.8 MeV radiation throughout the entire sky.<br />The aim of this thesis is to infer the galactic distribution of 26Al from <br />these measurements and to identify the dominant sources of this <br />radioactive isotope.<br /><br />The first part of the thesis is dedicated to the reconstruction of <br />the 1.8 MeV intensity distribution from the measured data.<br />It is demonstrated that the use of conventional deconvolution <br />algorithms, like maximum likelihood or maximum entropy inversion, <br />leads to lumpy, noise-dominated intensity distributions.<br />Nevertheless, simulations can help to assess the uncertainties in the <br />reconstructed images, which permits the scientific exploitation of the <br />recovered skymaps.<br />Alternatively, a multiresolution approach is proposed, which largely <br />reduces the uncertainties in the reconstructed 1.8 MeV intensity <br />distribution.<br />In summary, 1.8 MeV emission is mainly concentrated towards the <br />galactic plane, which clearly demonstrates that the bulk of 26Al is of <br />galactic rather than local origin.<br />However, distinct emission features towards Cygnus, Carina, and the <br />Auriga-Camelopardalis-Perseus region are inconsistent with a smooth <br />galactic 1.8 MeV emission profile, pointing towards a massive star <br />origin of 26Al.<br /><br />The second part of the thesis consists of a multi-wavelength <br />comparison of COMPTEL 1.8 MeV data which aims in the <br />identification of the origin of galactic 26Al.<br />For the comparison, a rigorous Bayesian analysis is applied, which <br />is the only consistent framework that allows inference based on the <br />comparison.<br />It turned out that the 1.8 MeV distribution follows very closely <br />the distribution of free electrons in the Galaxy which is traced by <br />thermal bremsstrahlung, observable in the microwave domain.<br />The similarity of the 1.8 MeV intensity distribution to the<br />thermal bremsstrahlung distribution implies a direct proportionality <br />between the 26Al and the massive star column densities, which strongly <br />supports that massive stars are the origin of galactic 26Al.<br />In particular, ONeMg-novae and AGB stars can be excluded as dominant <br />26Al sources since their galactic distribution is not expected to <br />correlate with the distribution of free electrons.<br /><br />The correlation between 26Al and free electrons established, the <br />analysis of 1.8 MeV gamma-ray line emission can complement our knowledge <br />about star formation and the distribution of ionized gas throughout <br />the entire Galaxy. <br />While COMPTEL made the first step in providing the first all-sky map <br />in the light of the 1.809 MeV line, INTEGRAL, the next generation gamma-ray spectrometer, will allow a detailed study of current star formation <br />in the Galaxy.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:CCSD/oai:tel.archives-ouvertes.fr:tel-00145359 |
| Date | 24 November 1997 |
| Creators | Knödlseder, Jürgen |
| Publisher | Université Paul Sabatier - Toulouse III |
| Source Sets | CCSD theses-EN-ligne, France |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | PhD thesis |
Page generated in 0.0019 seconds