Matched filters for source detection in the Poissonian noise regime

Abstract

A procedure is described for estimating an optimum kernel for the detection by convolution of signals among Poissonian noise. The technique is applied to the detection of X-ray point sources in XMM-Newton data, and is shown to yield an improvement in detection sensitivity of up to 60% over the sliding-box method used in the creation of the 1XMM catalog.