Xissim simulates XIS photon events. It is useful for simulating contamination from nearby sources or diffuse sources, which is difficult to foresee from a simple simulation with XSPEC. To generate a simulated event list, users should take three main steps: 1) decide how to place the XIS field of view (FOV) on the sky; 2) fake incident photons from celestial sources in the XIS FOV with mkphlist; and 3) simulate XIS events of the faked photons with xissim, which takes into account the XRT efficiency and the XIS response. The final event list has the event FITS format, so that users can analyze the simulated data as the actual data analysis.
Xissim and related tools are available as a ~130 Mbyte gzipped tar file. The package include the binary executable for Linux, OSF, and Mac OS X machines, and calibration data necessary for simulation. Please consult the Suzaku GOF if you need a binary executable for a different platform.
Note: the version released earlier, xissim-2005-12-20.tar.gz, did not treat the precollimator/stray light correctly. If you used that version in a simulation that involves a significant amount of stray light (such as an observation of object near a bright X-ray binary), you should download the new version (xissim-2005-12-24.tar.gz) and try again. We apologize for the inconviniences.
The following pages describe a step-by-step guide of the simulation procedure.