efluxer
is a tool to generate an X-ray spectrum in physical
units (erg/cm
/s/keV vs keV) rather than in the usual instrument
counts vs channel space. It is based on a method described in
astro-ph... that includes corrections for the energy redistribution
and the effective area of the telescope, filter and detector combination.
In its current form, the algorithm is applicable to EPIC spectra from any combination of scientific modes and filters. One of the drawbacks of the method is that the effective spectral resolution in the output spectra is degraded with respect to the instrinsic spectral resolution of the instruments. Therefore, the resulting spectra can be safely used to obtain model independent fluxes in broad energy bands or in analysis of continuum shapes or for quick-look analysis and visualization. But for analysis of narrow spectral features or, in general, to exploit the full spectral resolution of the EPIC cameras, the users are recommended to employ traditional fitting techniques of physical models convolved with the redistribution matrix and effective area.
