SIMULTANEOUS CORRELATION-ANALYSIS OF COMBINED GAMMA-RAY DATA

Expressions have been derived for the standard deviation of the total correlated flux, sigma(C(f)T), and the parent standard deviation of the underlying background sigma-0(C(f)T), of a gamma-ray excess in a correlation analysis of raw gamma-ray data combined from different sources, e.g., from different energy ranges of the same satellite, from the same energy range from different satellites, or from different energy ranges from different satellites. These expressions form the basis for the simultaneous correlation analysis method. The advantages of using simultaneous correlation analysis include the increase in the number of photons in the analysis, thus improving the statistics, and the enhancement of the signal received from a genuine source. This method can be utilized to analyze the SAS 2 data, the COS B data, the data from the GRO, and any combination of the above.