Gamma-ray Astrophysics in the MeV Range: the ASTROGAM Concept and Beyond
Abstract
The energy range between about 100 keV and 1 GeV is of interest for a vast class of astrophysical topics. In particular, (1) it is the missing ingredient for understanding extreme processes in the multi-messenger era; (2) it allows localizing cosmic-ray interactions with background material and radiation in the Universe, and spotting the reprocessing of these particles; (3) last but not least, gamma-ray emission lines trace the formation of elements in the Galaxy and beyond. In addition, studying the still largely unexplored MeV domain of astronomy would provide for a rich observatory science, including the study of compact objects, solar- and Earth-science, as well as fundamental physics. The technological development of silicon microstrip detectors makes it possible now to detect MeV photons in space with high efficiency and low background. During the last decade, a concept of detector ("ASTROGAM") has been proposed to fulfil these goals, based on a silicon hodoscope, a 3D position-sensitive calorimeter, and an anticoincidence detector. In this paper we stress the importance of a medium size (M-class) space mission, dubbed "ASTROMEV", to fulfil these objectives.
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Cite
@article{arxiv.2102.02460,
title = {Gamma-ray Astrophysics in the MeV Range: the ASTROGAM Concept and Beyond},
author = {Alessandro De Angelis and Vincent Tatischeff and Andrea Argan and Soren Brandt and Andrea Bulgarelli and Andrei Bykov and Elisa Costantini and Rui Curado da Silva and Isabelle A. Grenier and Lorraine Hanlon and Dieter Hartmann and Margarida Hernanz and Gottfried Kanbach and Irfan Kuvvetli and Philippe Laurent and Mario N. Mazziotta and Julie McEnery and Aldo Morselli and Kazuhiro Nakazawa and Uwe Oberlack and Mark Pearce and Javier Rico and Marco Tavani and Peter von Ballmoos and Roland Walter and Xin Wu and Silvia Zane and Andrzej Zdziarski and Andreas Zoglauer},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2102.02460},
year = {2023}
}
Comments
White Paper for the Voyage 2050 Program by ESA. Accepted for publication in "Experimental Astronomy". arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1711.01265