Abstract
The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, a key mission in multiwavelength and multimessenger studies, has been surveying the γ-ray sky from its low-Earth orbit since 2008. Its two scientific instruments, the Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) and the Large Area Telescope (LAT), cover 8 orders of magnitude in photon energy. The GBM consists of 12 sodium iodide detectors and 2 bismuth germanate detectors, covering the 10 keV–40 MeV energy range, arrayed on two sides of the spacecraft so as to view the entire sky that is not occulted by the Earth. The LAT is a pair production telescope based on silicon strip trackers, a cesium iodide calorimeter, and a plastic scintillator anticoincidence system. It covers the energy range from about 20 MeV to more than 500 GeV, with a field of view of about 2.4 steradians. Thanks to their huge fields of view, the instruments can observe the entire sky with a cadence of about an hour for GBM and about 3 h for LAT. All γ-ray data from Fermi become public immediately, enabling a broad range of multiwavelength and multimessenger research. Over 3000 γ-ray bursts (GRBs), including GRB 170817A associated with a neutron star merger detected in gravitational waves, and 5000 high-energy sources, including the blazar TXS 0506+056 associated with high-energy neutrinos, have been detected by the Fermi instruments. The Fermi Science Support Center provides a wide array of resources to enable scientific use of the data, including background models, source catalogs, analysis software, documentation, and a Help Desk.
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Acknowledgements
A major observatory like Fermi involves the work of hundreds of scientists, engineers, technicians, software developers, and others. We are grateful to all those who have contributed to the success of Fermi. Some leaders deserve special thanks. Bill Atwood is the “spark plug” whose vision of a telescope based on silicon strip technology was instrumental in starting the project. The Principal Investigators (PI) responsible for building the two scientific instruments showed outstanding leadership: Peter Michelson for the LAT and Charles Meegan for GBM. Kevin Grady, the Project Manager for Fermi, kept the program on track through all phases. Chris Shrader’s leadership of the Fermi Science Support Center has been important to involving the broader astrophysical community. The Project Scientists – Steven Ritz, Julie McEnery, and Elizabeth Hays – have kept science at the forefront of all aspects of Fermi. The current Fermi GBM PI, Colleen A. Wilson-Hodge, acknowledges the numerous contributions and the dedication of the GBM team and of the many scientists supported by the Fermi Guest Investigator Program.
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Thompson, D.J., Wilson-Hodge, C.A. (2023). Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope. In: Bambi, C., Santangelo, A. (eds) Handbook of X-ray and Gamma-ray Astrophysics. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-4544-0_58-1
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