Related papers: Reducing the Athena WFI charged particle backgroun…
Thermal neutron detector based on films of $^{10}$B$_4$C have been developed as an alternative to $^3$He detectors. In particular, The Multi-Grid detector concept is considered for future large area detectors for ESS and ILL instruments. An…
The Large Observatory For X-ray Timing (LOFT) is an innovative medium-class mission selected for an assessment phase in the framework of the ESA M3 Cosmic Vision call. LOFT is intended to answer fundamental questions about the behaviour of…
The ultra-high contrast capability required to form images of other solar systems is arguably the highest-profile challenge in astronomy today. The current high-contrast imaging efforts all require background subtraction to separate the…
The X-ray Integral Field Unit (X-IFU) is the high resolution X-ray spectrometer of ESA's Athena X-ray observatory. It will deliver X-ray data in the 0.2-12 keV band with an unprecedented spectral resolution of 2.5 eV up to 7 keV. During the…
Observations of the gamma-ray sky reveal the most powerful sources and the most violent events in the Universe. While at lower wavebands the observed emission is generally dominated by thermal processes, the gamma-ray sky provides us with a…
Axion helioscopes aim at the detection of solar axions through their conversion into x-rays in laboratory magnetic fields. The use of low background x-ray detectors is an essential component contributing to the sensitivity of these…
The Athena X-Ray Integral Field Unit (X-IFU) will provide spatially resolved high-resolution spectroscopy (2.5 eV FWHM up to 7 keV) over the 0.2 to 12 keV energy band. It will comprise an array of 3840 superconducting Transition Edge…
Overdense regions at high redshift ($z \gtrsim 2$) are perfect laboratories to study the relations between environment and SMBH growth, and the AGN feedback processes on the surrounding galaxies and diffuse gas. In this white paper, we…
Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) are one of the best motivated candidates to compose the Dark Matter of the Universe. The lack of experimental confirmation by direct detection experiments or collider searches has ruled out…
Our understanding of the background of the EPIC/pn camera onboard XMM-Newton is incomplete. This affects the study of extended sources and can influence the predictions of the background of future X-ray missions. We provide new results…
Numerous astronomical and cosmological observations point to the existence of dark matter, which constitutes about 27% of the Universe. Despite extensive efforts, only the DAMA/LIBRA experiment, using NaI(Tl) detectors at Gran Sasso…
Geant4 is a tool kit developed by a collaboration of physicists and computer professionals in the High Energy Physics field for simulation of the passage of particles through matter. The motivation for the development of the Beam Tools is…
Motivation: ESAs goal to detect biomarkers in Earth-like exoplanets in the Habitable Zone requires theoretical groundwork that needs to be done to model the influence of different parameters on the detectable biomarkers. We need to model a…
We propose to use a simple observable, the fractional area of "hot spots" in weak gravitational lensing mass maps which are detected with high significance, to determine background cosmological parameters. Because these high-convergence…
With the goal of extracting as much information as possible from Chandra and XMM-Newton observations of faint, diffuse sources such as galaxy clusters, as well as those of future X-ray telescopes, we present a strategy for forward modeling…
The coming Planck and Herschel missions will survey the sky at unprecedented angular scales and sensitivities. Simulations are needed for better interpretating the results of the surveys and for testing new methods of, e.g., source…
As direct and indirect dark matter detection experiments continue to place stringent constraints on WIMP masses and couplings, it becomes imperative to expand the scope of the search for particle dark matter by looking in new and exotic…
With the INTEGRAL observatory, ESA has provided a unique tool to the astronomical community revealing hundreds of sources, new classes of objects, extraordinary views of antimatter annihilation in our Galaxy, and fingerprints of recent…
We present constraints on the density of halo dark matter candidates within the solar circle based on the anisotropy in the high energy gamma-ray background. The known galactic components of the gamma-ray background, in particular the…
Focal plane X-ray polarimetry is intended for relatively bright sources with a negligible impact of background. However this might not be always possible for IXPE (Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer) when observing faint extended sources…