Marelli, Martino, Molendi, Silvano, Rossetti, Mariachiara, Gastaldello, Fabio, Salvetti, David, De Luca, Andrea, Bartalucci, Iacopo, Kühl, Patrick, Esposito, Paolo, Ghizzardi, Simona, and Tiengo, Andrea
Our understanding of the background of the EPIC/pn camera on board XMM-Newton is incomplete. This affects the study of extended sources and can influence the predictions of the expected background of future X-ray missions, such as the Advanced Telescope for High Energy Astrophysics (ATHENA). Here we provide new results based on the analysis of the largest data set ever used. We focus on the unconcentrated component of the EPIC/pn background, supposedly related to cosmic rays interacting with detector and telescope structures. We show that the so-called out field-of-view region of the pn detector is actually exposed to the sky. After carefully cleaning from the sky contamination, the unconcentrated background measured in the out field-of-view region does not show significant spatial variations, and its time behavior is anticorrelated with the solar cycle. We find a very tight linear correlation between unconcentrated backgrounds detected in the EPIC/pn and EPIC/MOS2 cameras. This relationship permits the correct evaluation of the pn unconcentrated background of each exposure on the basis of MOS2 data, avoiding the use of the contaminated out field-of-view region of the pn, as done in standard techniques. We find a tight linear correlation between the pn unconcentrated background and the proton flux in the 630–970 MeV energy band, as measured by the EPHIN instrument on board SOHO. Through this relationship, we quantify the contribution of cosmic-ray interaction to the pn unconcentrated background. This reveals a second source that contributes to the pn unconcentrated background for a significant fraction (30%–70%). This agent does not depend on the solar cycle or vary with time and is roughly isotropic. After having ruled out several candidates, we find that the hard X-ray photons of the cosmic X-ray background satisfy all known properties of the constant component. Our findings provide an important observational confirmation of simulation results on ATHENA and suggest that a high-energy particle monitor could contribute decisively to the reproducibility of the background for both experiments on ATHENA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]