XIPE: the X-ray Imaging Polarimetry Explorer
Abstract
X-ray polarimetry, sometimes alone, and sometimes coupled to spectral and temporal variability measurements and to imaging, allows a wealth of physical phenomena in astrophysics to be studied. X-ray polarimetry investigates the acceleration process, for example, including those typical of magnetic reconnection in solar flares, but also emission in the strong magnetic fields of neutron stars and white dwarfs. It detects scattering in asymmetric structures such as accretion disks and columns, and in the so-called molecular torus and ionization cones. In addition, it allows fundamental physics in regimes of gravity and of magnetic field intensity not accessible to experiments on the Earth to be probed. Finally, models that describe fundamental interactions (e.g. quantum gravity and the extension of the Standard Model) can be tested. We describe in this paper the X-ray Imaging Polarimetry Explorer (XIPE), proposed in June 2012 to the first ESA call for a small mission with a launch in 2017 but not selected. XIPE is composed of two out of the three existing JET-X telescopes with two Gas Pixel Detectors (GPD) filled with a He-DME mixture at their focus and two additional GPDs filled with pressurized Ar-DME facing the sun. The Minimum Detectable Polarization is 14 % at 1 mCrab in 10E5 s (2-10 keV) and 0.6 % for an X10 class flare. The Half Energy Width, measured at PANTER X-ray test facility (MPE, Germany) with JET-X optics is 24 arcsec. XIPE takes advantage of a low-earth equatorial orbit with Malindi as down-link station and of a Mission Operation Center (MOC) at INPE (Brazil).
Cite
@article{arxiv.1309.6995,
title = {XIPE: the X-ray Imaging Polarimetry Explorer},
author = {Paolo Soffitta and Xavier Barcons and Ronaldo Bellazzini and João Braga and Enrico Costa and George W. Fraser and Szymon Gburek and Juhani Huovelin and Giorgio Matt and Mark Pearce and Juri Poutanen and Victor Reglero and Andrea Santangelo and Rashid A. Sunyaev and Gianpiero Tagliaferri and Martin Weisskopf and Roberto Aloisio and Elena Amato and Primo Attiná and Magnus Axelsson and Luca Baldini and Stefano Basso and Stefano Bianchi and Pasquale Blasi and Johan Bregeon and Alessandro Brez and Niccoló Bucciantini and Luciano Burderi and Vadim Burwitz and Piergiorgio Casella and Eugene Churazov and Marta Civitani and Stefano Covino and Rui Miguel Curado da Silva and Giancarlo Cusumano and Mauro Dadina and Flavio D'Amico and Alessandra De Rosa and Sergio Di Cosimo and Giuseppe Di Persio and Tiziana Di Salvo and Michal Dovciak and Ronald Elsner and Chris J. Eyles and Andrew C. Fabian and Sergio Fabiani and Hua Feng and Salvatore Giarrusso and René W. Goosmann and Paola Grandi and Nicolas Grosso and Gianluca Israel and Miranda Jackson and Philip Kaaret and Vladimir Karas and Michael Kuss and Dong Lai and Giovanni La Rosa and Josefin Larsson and Stefan Larsson and Luca Latronico and Antonio Maggio and Jorge Maia and Frédéric Marin and Marco Maria Massai and Teresa Mineo and Massimo Minuti and Elena Moretti and Fabio Muleri and Stephen L. O'Dell and Giovanni Pareschi and Giovanni Peres and Melissa Pesce and Pierre-Olivier Petrucci and Michele Pinchera and Delphine Porquet and Brian Ramsey and Nanda Rea and Fabio Reale and Juana Maria Rodrigo and Agata Różańska and Alda Rubini and Pawel Rudawy and Felix Ryde and Marco Salvati and Valdivino Alexandre de Santiago Júnior and Sergey Sazonov and Carmelo Sgró and Eric Silver and Gloria Spandre and Daniele Spiga and Luigi Stella and Toru Tamagawa and Francesco Tamborra and Fabrizio Tavecchio and Teresa Teixeira Dias and Matthew van Adelsberg and Kinwah Wu and Silvia Zane},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1309.6995},
year = {2016}
}
Comments
49 pages, 14 figures, 6 tables. Paper published in Experimental Astronomy http://link.springer.com/journal/10686