• Parmar, Arvind
• Hasinger, G.
• Turner, M.

Abstract

XEUS is a potential follow-on to XMM-Newton, ESA's Cornerstone X-Ray Spectroscopy Mission currently in operation, and is under study as part of the Horizon 2000+ plan to utilize the International Space Station (ISS) for astronomical applications. XEUS will be a long-term X-ray observatory with an initial aperture of 6 m^2, an energy range of 0.05-30 keV and a spatial resolution of 2" to 5" at 1 keV. The focal plane detectors will consist of both narrow and wide-field imagers with fields of view of 1 and 5-10', respectively. The narrow field imagers are expected to have an energy resolution of <2 eV at 1 keV and the wide field imager 50 eV at 1 keV. Following refurbishment at the ISS the mirror area of 30 m^2 at 1 keV will allow sources as faint as 4 10^-18 erg cm^-2 s^-1 to be detected. The enormous low-energy collecting area and good spatial resolution of XEUS will allow the detection of massive black holes in the earliest AGN and estimates of their mass, spin and redshift through studies of relativistically broadened Fe-K lines and variability to be made. XEUS will allow the study of the formation of the first gravitationally bound, dark matter dominated, systems ie. small groups of galaxies and the tracing of their evolution into today's massive clusters. High resolution spectroscopy will allow the study of the evolution of metal synthesis down to the present epoch, using in particular, observations of the hot intra-cluster gas while the hot filamentary structure will be studied using absorption line spectroscopy to allow the mass, temperature and density of the intergalactic medium to be characterized....

Topics

• density
• impedance spectroscopy
• cluster
• X-ray spectroscopy