4th International Fermi Symposium Proceedings
This table provides an interactive window for accessing information from the 4th International Fermi Symposium Proceedings Database. Click any column header to sort the table on that column. Click the header again to reverse the sort order. Cells with blue text are links you can click to view related information or download related files. See the Overview section below for more information about the interactive proceedings table. See the Preface and Acknowledgements sections for a review of the symposium. For more information about the symposium, see the NASA-Goddard symposium website and the Stanford-GLAST symposium website.
Overview of the Proceedings Table
The interactive proceedings table above displays a list of 70 papers—22 representing oral presentations and 48 representing posters—that have been submitted to arXiv for inclusion in the 2012 Fermi Symposium Proceedings. For each paper, this table includes a link to its arXiv abstract web page and a link to its first page in the PDF Proceedings file. The table also includes links to PDF slide presentation files or posters and video files associated with some presentations.
Click the PDF Proceedings tab on the navigation bar to view/download the PDF file for the complete proceedings. Click the e-Program tab to view an interactive web version of the symposium program or click the PDF Program tab to view/download a PDF copy of the printed program. The About tab contains information about the proceedings editorial team and links to symposium web pages.
Table Columns Legend
- Date — The presentation date as listed in the symposium program
- Time — For oral presentations, this column displays the time that the presentation began,as listed in the symposium program. For posters, the time has been set to 16:00 (4:00pm), which was the time that each poster session began.
- Category — One of the 10 Fermi research topic categories assigned to each presentation or poster. The categories include:
- Instrumentation & Analysis
- Solar System
- Pulsars
- Supernova Remnants & Pulsar Wind Nebulae
- Other Galactic Gamma-ray Sources
- Diffuse Emission
- Dark Matter & New Physics
- Active Galactic Nuclei
- Gamma-ray Bursts
- Other Extragalactic Gamma-ray Sources
- Author— Last Name, First Name. Click the author's name link to view the author and all co-authors in an overlay window.
- Title / Abstract — Title as listed in the symposium program. Click the title/abstract link to view the abstract in an overlay window.
- Slides —PDF link, if present, indicates the availability of a PDF file containing the presentation slides or poster
- Videos — Links, if present, indicate file type of video file(s) used during the presentation: Apple QuickTime (MOV, M4V), MPEG or MPEG4 (MGP, MP4), Window Media (WMV)
- arXiv# — Displays and links to the arXiv abstract web page for the paper
- Page# — Displays the Proceedings Page Number on which this paper begins in the Proceedings PDF file. Click on a page number link to view the corresponding arXiv PDF file for this paper. Note: These individual arXiv PDF files do not have proceedings page numbers. Sort this column into ascending order to return the table to the proceedings order.
Sorting the Table
Click a column heading to sort this table on that column. Click the heading again to reverse the sort order.
To reset the table into the order of the symposium PDF proceedings, sort the Page# column into ascending order.
To sort this proceedings table into the "times within dates" order of the symposium scientific program, do the following:
- Click the Date column once or twice until it's sorted in descending order.
- Click the Time column once or twice until it's sorted in ascending order.
- Click the Date column once to sort it into ascending order.
Preface to the Proceedings
The 2012 international symposium was the fourth in an ongoing series of meetings devoted to the operation, science, and data analysis for the Fermi Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (formerly known as GLAST). Since its launch in June 2008, Fermi has provided a wealth of gamma-ray data spanning topics ranging from the earth and our local solar system to the most distant objects in the universe, and from the moon to the most massive and energetic objects. The 4th Fermi Symposium provided a forum for researchers to discuss advances enabled by the Fermi data set, to gain new insights into both the objects observed by Fermi and the instrument itself, and to forge new and stronger collaborations for advancing knowledge across this huge breadth of topics.
This week long symposium was held at the Hyatt Hotel Conference Center in Monterey, California from Monday morning, 29 October – Friday noon, 2 November 2012. There were plenary sessions on each of the four and one half days, plus parallel sessions in the afternoons on Tuesday and Wednesday and a special Multiwavelength session on Tuesday evening. In addition, posters were on display Monday – Thursday, with dedicated discussion from 16:00 – 17:30 on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. On Wednesday evening, 31 October, participants and guests enjoyed a strolling dinner and hosted bar at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Since it was Halloween, many participants arrived in costume, which added a festive flare to the evening. The musical trio “East-Moves-West,” featuring vocalists Jonelyn Langenstein (soprano) and Sepp Hammer (baritone), accompanied by keyboardist Kim Jungmee performed live next to the main aquarium fish tank and mesmerized the giant sea turtle inside the tank. In addition, participants and guests were treated to a popular lecture in the aquarium auditorium by Barbara Block, Stanford Professor of Marine Sciences, Evolutionary, Cellular and Molecular Physiology and Senior Fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. Dr. Block spoke on the topic “Sushi and Satellites: Tracking Top Marine Predators Across the Blue Planet.” Photos from the symposium and the evening at the Monterey Bay Aquarium can be viewed at: https://www-glast.stanford.edu/2012FermiSymp/pictures.html
Building on previous research and analysis of the ever-expanding volume of data that has been telemetered to Earth from the Large Area Telescope (LAT) and the Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) on board the Fermi spacecraft, this symposium featured 294 presentations—105 oral presentations delivered during plenary and parallel sessions and 189 accepted posters. Each oral and poster scientific presentation was assigned to one of ten topical categories:
- Instrumentation & Analysis
- Solar System
- Pulsars
- Supernova Remnants & Pulsar Wind Nebulae
- Other Galactic Gamma-ray Sources
- Diffuse Emission
- Dark Matter & New Physics
- Active Galactic Nuclei
- Gamma-ray Bursts
- Other Extragalactic Gamma-ray Sources
For these symposium proceedings, a subset of 70 presenters authored or co-authored papers summarizing their research and submitted them to the Astrophysics group (astro-ph) on arXiv.org. Of the 70 papers comprising these proceedings, 22 represent oral presentations delivered during plenary or parallel sessions, and 48 represent poster presentations.
In the final symposium session on November 2nd, SLAC physicist, Seth Digel, looked back over the week’s presentations and summarized important Fermi research results, areas of ongoing investigation, and new areas of exploration. Following are some highlights from Dr. Digel’s summary.
After four and one half years in orbit, the Fermi spacecraft and its two main instruments—the Large Area Telescope (LAT) and the Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) are both in excellent working order and are functioning nominally. The LAT has triggered over 275 billion times and ground processing of the data has resulted in more than 225 million gamma-ray Source-class events. The GBM has detected over 1,000 gamma-ray bursts. In the 2012 NASA Senior Review, the Fermi mission was approved for continued full operations through 2014, with a recommended extension though 2016 and another review in 2014.
Within our solar system, research has focused on terrestrial gamma-ray flashes (TGFs) and cosmic ray interactions in the upper atmosphere. In addition, the moon is being studied as a passive gamma-ray source, and Fermi data has yielded insight into the Sun, solar flares and the heliospheric magnetic field.
Moving out to our galaxy, pulsars are a hot topic, with the number of LAT-detected pulsars approaching 200. The first blind search millisecond pulsar was announced during the week of the 2012 symposium, and the study of very high energy pulsars has advanced considerably since the 3rd Fermi Symposium in 2011. The first Fermi LAT catalog of supernova remnants is being compiled, and a search for pulsar wind nebulas continues, with approximately 15 candidates identified. Two new novas have also been identified since the 3rd Fermi Symposium, and Fermi’s view of the Galactic Center is being analyzed.
A number of recent studies have focused on using the Fermi-LAT for the indirect detection of cosmic rays and measurements of variation in cosmic-ray density. Another cluster of studies has directed attention to the composition and mechanisms producing two gamma-ray bubbles discovered by the Fermi-LAT above and below the Galactic plane.
Moving further out in our galaxy, considerable effort has focused on indirect searches for dark matter in a variety of places, including the Galactic Center and halo and dwarf spheroidal galaxies. Two studies have shown that a broad emission pattern from Virgo is not consistent with gamma rays from a dark matter profile. Ground-based searches using the VERITAS telescope array in Arizona and searches for photon lines in the 130-135 GeV range have also been performed.
Beyond our galaxy, active galactic nuclei (AGN) have been a very productive research area. Correlation of Fermi gamma-ray sources with the WISE Infrared Catalog has led to the identification of many blazars. The quality and quantity of Fermi-LAT data has spawned new directions in AGN modeling.
Analysis of more than 1,000 gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) captured by the GBM along with some 35 GRBs identified by the LAT is ongoing. New efforts are addressing the broadband modeling discrepancies generated by this wealth of data, and simulations show in detail how energy can be extracted from a spinning black hole with a thick accretion disc.
The diffuse background emission data are being analyzed to identify the contributions of various gamma-ray source categories. In addition, there has been notable progress in the analysis of extragalactic background light.
Finally, in the area of instrumentation and analysis, there was considerable discussion of Pass 7 performance and a Pass 7 reprocessing effort to update calibration constants for the LAT data. Detailed plans for Pass 8 processing were also presented and discussed. Observing in an all-sky survey mode has permitted a wealth of Fermi catalogs including the Second LAT Pulsar Catalog, the LAT GRB catalog, the Fermi-LAT SNR Catalog, the First Fermi-LAT Catalog of Sources greater than10GeV, the Catalog of Flaring Gamma-ray Sources, catalogs of LAT- and GBM-Detected TGFs, extension of the GBM GRB and Spectral Catalogs for years 3 and 4, the planned 5-Year Catalog of LAT Point Sources, and others.
— Bob Kahn, Seth Digel, Terri Brandt, Nicola Omodei and Colleen Wilson-Hodge
June 2013
Above is a Fermi Word Cloud—a visualization of the frequency distribution of words used in the abstracts submitted to the 2012 Fermi Symposium. The larger the size of a word, the more often it appeared. The colors are added for aesthetics.
Acknowledgements
This symposium was made possible by registration fees paid by the participants and by generous support from NASA and Stanford University.
International Science Organizing Committee
| • William Atwood (UCSC) | • Deirdre Horan (LLR) |
| • Ronaldo Bellazzini (INFN, Pisa) | • Buell Jannuzi (U of Arizona) |
| • Roger Blandford (Stanford/KIPAC) | • Victoria Kaspi (McGill U) |
| • Elliott Bloom (SLAC/KIPAC) | • Nobuyuki Kawai (Tokyo) |
| • James Buckley (WashU) | • Luca Latronico (INFN Torino) |
| • Fernando Camilo (Columbia U and Arecibo) | • Alan Marscher (BU) |
| • Patrizia Caraveo (INAF-IASF, Milano) | • Peter Michelson (Stanford) |
| • Eric Charles (SLAC) | • Jonathan Ormes (Denver) |
| • Charles Dermer (NRL) | • William Paciesas (UA Huntsville) |
| • Seth Digel (SLAC/KIPAC) | • Anthony Readhead (Caltech) |
| • Dale Frail (NRAO) | • Steven Ritz (UCSC) |
| • Bryan Gaensler (U Sydney) | • Andrew Strong (MPE Garching) |
| • Neil Gehrels (GSFC) | • Gino Tosti (INFN and University Perugia) |
| • Isabelle Grenier (Laboratoire AIM, Saclay) | • Stefan Wagner (Heidelberg) |
| • Jochen Greiner (MPE) | • Colleen Wilson-Hodge (MSFC) |
| • Elizabeth Hays (GSFC) |
Local Organizing Committee
| • Tom Langenstein — Chair, Stanford University, USA | • Peter Michelson, Stanford University, USA |
| • Nancy Christiansen, Stanford University, USA | • Nicola Omodei, Stanford University, USA |
| • Lynn Cominsky, Sonoma State University, USA | • Steve Ritz, University of California Santa Cruz, USA |
| • WenLi Heffner (a.k.a Lucy Zhou), Stanford University, USA | • Dorrene Ross, Stanford University, USA |
| • Bob Kahn, Stanford University, USA | • Giovanna Senatore, Stanford University, USA |
We are grateful to Aurore Simonnet, Lynn Cominsky and the Fermi EPO team at Sonoma State University, who designed and produced the excellent Program Book and the symposium poster. Also, thanks to J.D. Myers at NASA-Goddard and to Giovanna Senatore at Stanford who produced the NASA and Stanford symposium websites, respectively, and who also provided very helpful web support.
Thanks to Bob Kahn at Stanford for providing guidance and support to presenters in the preparation and delivery of presentations during plenary and parallel sessions. We also thank Bob for designing and producing these proceedings, with help from the Proceedings Editorial Committee: Nicola Omodei, and Giovanna Senatore from Stanford, Terri Brandt from NASA-Goddard and Colleen Wilson-Hodge from NASA-MSFC.
We are particularly grateful for the dedicated work of Tom Langenstein, WenLi Heffner and Peter Michelson at Stanford who anticipated and solved a wide range of logistical problems efficiently and professionally. In addition, we’re grateful to Nancy Christiansen and Dorrene Ross at Stanford and to Julie McEnery and Terri Brandt at NASA-Goddard for their work on various facets of the symposium, from registration to vendor arrangements to creating and maintaining the presenter’s database and many other important tasks.
Lastly, we acknowledge the strong international support and essential contributions to the Fermi mission from Italy, France, Germany, Japan, and Sweden. Finally, we thank all our collaborators and co-workers of the international Fermi mission team who have worked so hard to bring us to this point.