The Hot and Energetic Universe: A White Paper presenting the science theme motivating the Athena+ mission

Nandra, K.; Barret, D.; Barcons, X.; Fabian, A. C.; Herder, Jan-Willem den; Piro, L.; Watson, M. G.; Adami, C.; Aird, James; Afonso, J.; Alexander, D. M.; Argiroffi, C.; Amati, L.; Arnaud, M.; Atteia, J. L.; Audard, M.; Badenes, Carles; Ballet, J.; Ballo, L.; Bamba, Aya; Bhardwaj, Anil; Battistelli, E. S.; Becker, Werner; Becker, M. De; Behar, E.; Bianchi, S.; Biffi, V.; Bîrzan, L.; Bocchino, F.; Bogdanov, Slavko; Boirin, L.; Böller, Thomas; Borgani, S.; Borm, Katharina; Bouché, Nicolas; Bourdin, H.; Bower, Richard G.; Braito, V.; Branchini, E.; Branduardi‐Raymont, G.; Bregman, J. N.; Brenneman, Laura; Brightman, Murray; Brüggen, M.; Büchner, Johannes; Bulbul, Esra; Brusa, M.; Bursa, Michal; Caccianiga, A.; Cackett, E.; Campana, S.; Cappelluti, N.; Cappi, M.; Carrera, Francisco J.; Ceballos, M. T.; Christensen, Finn Erland; Chu, You‐Hua; Churazov, E.; Clerc, N.; Corbel, S.; Corral, A.; Comastri, A.; Costantini, E.; Croston, J. H.; Dadina, M.; D’Aí, A.; Decourchelle, A.; Ceca, R. Della; Dennerl, K.; Dolag, K.; Done, Chris; Dovčiak, Michal; Drake, J. J.; Eckert, D.; Edge, A. C.; Ettori, S.; Ezoe, Yuichiro; Feigelson, E. D.; Fender, R. P.; Feruglio, C.; Finoguenov, A.; Fiore, F.; Galeazzi, Massimiliano; Gallagher, S. C.; Gandhi, P.; Gaspari, M.; Gastaldello, F.; Georgakakis, A.; Georgantopoulos, I.; Gilfanov, M.; Gitti, Myriam; Gladstone, R.; Goosmann, R. W.; Gosset, Éric; Grosso, N.; Guêdel, M.; Guerrero, M. A.; Haberl, F.; Hardcastle, M. J.; Heinz, Sebastian; Herrero, A.; Hervé, Anthony; Holmström, Mats; Iwasawa, K.; Jonker, P. G.; Kaastra, J. S.; Kara, Erin; Karas, Vladimír; Kastner, Joel H.; King, Andrew; Kosenko, D.; Koutroumpa, Dimita; Kraft, Ralph; Kreykenbohm, I.; Lallement, R.; Lanzuisi, G.; Lee, J.; Lemoine‐Goumard, M.; Lobban, A.; Lodato, Giuseppe; Lovisari, Lorenzo; Lotti, Simone; McCharthy, Ian; McNamara, B. R.; Maggio, A.; Maiolino, R.; Marco, Barbara De; Martino, D. de; Mateos, S.; Matt, Giorgio; Maughan, Ben; Mazzotta, P.; Méndez, Mariano; Merloni, A.; Micela, G.; Miceli, M.; Mignani, Robert; Miller, J. M.; Miniutti, G.; Molendi, S.; Montez, Rodolfo; Moretti, A.; Motch, C.; Nazé, Yaël; Nevalainen, J.; Nicastro, F.; Nulsen, P. E. J.; Ohashi, T.; O’Brien, P. T.; Osborne, J. P.; Oskinova, L. M.; Pacaud, F.; Paerels, F.; Page, M. J.; Papadakis, I. E.; Pareschi, G.; Petre, Robert; Petrucci, Pierre-Olivier; Piconcelli, E.; Pillitteri, I.; Pinto, C.; Plaa, J. de; Pointecouteau, Etienne; Ponman, T. J.; Ponti, G.; Porquet, D.; Pounds, K. A.; Pratt, G. W.; Predehl, P.; Proga, Daniel; Psaltis, Dimitrios; Rafferty, D. A.; Ramos-Ceja, M. E.; Ranalli, P.; Rasia, Elena; Rau, A.; Rauw, Grégor; Rea, N.; Read, A. M.; Reeves, J. N.; Reiprich, T. H.; Renaud, M.; Reynolds, C. S.; Risaliti, G.; Rodríguez, J.; Hidalgo, Paola Rodriguez; Roncarelli, M.; Rosario, D. J.; Rossetti, M.; Różáńska, A.; Rovilos, E.; Salvaterra, R.; Salvato, M.; Salvo, T. Di; Sanders, Jeremy K. M.; Sanz-Forcada, J.; Schawinski, Kevin; Schaye, Joop; Schwope, A. D.; Sciortino, S.; Severgnini, P.; Shankar, Francesco; Sijacki, Debora; Sim, Stuart; Schmid, Christian; Smith, Randall K.; Steiner, Andrew W.; Stelzer, B.; Stewart, G. C.; Strohmayer, Tod E.; Strüder, L.; Sun, Min; Takei, Yoh; Tatischeff, V.; Tiengo, A.; Tombesi, Francesco; Trinchieri, G.; Tsuru, T. G.; ud‐Doula, Asif; Ursino, Eugenio; Valencic, Lynne; Vanzella, E.; Vaughan, S.; Vignali, C.; Vink, Jacco; Vito, F.; Volonteri, Marta; Wang, Daniel; Webb, N.; Willingale, R.; Wilms, J.; Wise, Michael; Worrall, D. M.; Young, Andrew; Zampieri, L.; Zand, J. in’t; Zane, S.; Zezas, A.; Zhang, Yuying; Zhuravleva, Irina

doi:10.48550/arxiv.1306.2307

Cited by 398 publications

(448 citation statements)

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“…The Advanced Telescope for High-Energy Astrophysics (Athena) is an ESA mission planned to launch in the early 2030s [1]. To investigate its science theme of 'The Hot and Energetic Universe', Athena will utilize a high effective area X-ray telescope with two focal plane instruments-the Wide Field Imager WFI [2], a large field of view DEPFET detector, and the X-ray Integral Field Unit [3], a TES-based microcalorimeter array with around 3000 individual pixels and an energy resolution of 2.5 eV up to 7 keV.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Athena X-IFU Instrument Simulator xifusim

et al. 2022

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We present the instrument simulator developed for the X-ray Integral Field Unit X-IFU aboard the planned Athena mission. aims to be an accurate representation of the entire instrument, starting from a full simulation of the Transition-Edge Sensor (TES) array receiving impact photons unconstrained by the small signal limit. Its output current is then propagated through the entire readout chain, including multiplexing, amplification and the digital readout. The final output consists of triggered records, which can be post-processed to reconstruct the photon energies. The readout chain itself is separated into individual, modular blocks with several possible models for each, allowing the simulation of different readout schemes or models of varying physical accuracy at the expense of run time. New models are implemented as necessary to enable studies of the overall readout chain. Such studies are also facilitated by fine-grained control of the simulation output, including the internal state of intermediate simulation blocks. In addition to its modularity, also allows the manipulation of certain internal parameters during a run, enabling the simulation of readout chain characterization measurements, environmental drifts or various kinds of crosstalk.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Athena X-IFU Instrument Simulator xifusim

et al. 2022

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“…Development of the models. We are going to further improve nkbb and relxill nk, which we expect to be strictly necessary in view of very highquality data that will be available with the next generation of X-ray missions; e.g., Athena [82] and eXTP [83]. Our current priority is to include the returning radiation in the spectra calculated by relxill nk.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Testing General Relativity with black hole X-ray data: a progress report

Bambi

2021

Arab. J. Math.

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Einstein’s theory of General Relativity is one of the pillars of modern physics. For decades, the theory has been mainly tested in the weak field regime with experiments in the Solar System and observations of binary pulsars. Thanks to a new generation of observational facilities, the past 5 years have seen remarkable changes in this field and there are now numerous efforts for testing General Relativity in the strong field regime with black holes and neutron stars using different techniques. Here I will review the work of my group at Fudan University devoted to test General Relativity with black hole X-ray data.

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“…To estimate the extent to which future missions can distinguish between the two main models proposed to explain the soft excess (i.e., warm corona or relativistic reflection), we utilize the fakeit task in xspec to generate simulated data of future missions by using Model B with the exact best-fit values, and use Model A to fit the fake data. We choose the Advanced Telescope for High-Energy Astrophysics (Athena, Nandra et al 2013), the enhanced X-ray Timing and Polarimetry mission (eXTP, Zhang et al 2017) and the High-Energy X-ray Probe (HEX-P, Madsen et al 2018). The X-ray Integral Field Unit (X-IFU, Barret et al 2016) instrument on Athena has an effective energy range of 0.2-12 keV with 2.5 eV spectral resolution, satisfying our requirement to make a distinction.…”

Section: Simulations Of the Future Missionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Nature of Soft Excess in ESO 362-G18 Revealed by XMM-Newton and NuSTAR Spectroscopy

Xu,

García,

Walton

et al. 2021

Preprint

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We present a detailed spectral analysis of the joint XMM-Newton and NuSTAR observations of the active galactic nuclei (AGN) in the Seyfert 1.5 Galaxy ESO 362-G18. The broadband (0.3-79 keV) spectrum shows the presence of a power-law continuum with a soft excess below 2 keV, iron Kα emission (∼ 6.4 keV), and a Compton hump (peaking at ∼ 20 keV). We find that the soft excess can be modeled by two different possible scenarios: a warm (kT e ∼ 0.2 keV) and optically thick (τ ∼ 34) Comptonizing corona; or with relativistically-blurred reflection off a high-density (log [n e /cm −3 ]> 18.3) inner disk. These two models cannot be easily distinguished solely from their fit statistics. However, the low temperature (kT e ∼ 20 keV) and the thick optical depth (τ ∼ 5) of the hot corona required by the warm corona scenario are uncommon for AGNs. We also fit a 'hybrid' model, which includes both disk reflection and a warm corona. Unsurprisingly, as this is the most complex of the models considered, this provides the best fit, and more reasonable coronal parameters. In this case, the majority of the soft excess flux arises in the warm corona component. However, based on recent simulations of warm coronae, it is not clear whether such a structure can really exist at the low accretion rates relevant for ESO 362-G18 ( ṁ ∼ 0.015). This may therefore argue in favour of a scenario in which the soft excess is instead dominated by the relativistic reflection. Based on this model, we find that the data would require a compact hot corona (h ∼ 3 R Horizon ) around a highly spinning (a > 0.927) black hole.

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The Hot and Energetic Universe: A White Paper presenting the science theme motivating the Athena+ mission

Cited by 398 publications

References 0 publications

The Athena X-IFU Instrument Simulator xifusim

The Athena X-IFU Instrument Simulator xifusim

Testing General Relativity with black hole X-ray data: a progress report

The Nature of Soft Excess in ESO 362-G18 Revealed by XMM-Newton and NuSTAR Spectroscopy

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