Related papers: AXAF in Context: A Revolution
The Advanced X-ray Imaging Satellite (AXIS) is one of two candidate mission concepts selected for Phase-A study for the new NASA Astrophysics Probe Explorer (APEX) mission class, with a planned launch in 2032. The X-ray camera for AXIS is…
Within 40 years of the detection of the first extrasolar X-ray source in 1962,NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has achieved an increase in sensitivity of 10 orders of magnitude, comparable to the gain in going from naked-eye observations to…
LOFT, the large observatory for X-ray timing, was selected by the European Space Agency (ESA) in February 2011 as one of four medium size mission concepts for the Cosmic Vision program that will compete for a launch opportunity in the early…
This is a White Paper in support of the mission concept of the Large Observatory for X-ray Timing (LOFT), proposed as a medium-sized ESA mission. We discuss the potential of LOFT for the study of high-mass X-ray binaries and ultra-luminous…
The satellite missions Hipparcos and Gaia by the European Space Agency will together bring a decrease of astrometric errors by a factor 10000, four orders of magnitude, more than was achieved during the preceding 500 years. This modern…
In the field of beam physics, two frontier topics have taken center stage due to their potential to enable new approaches to discovery in a wide swath of science. These areas are: advanced, high gradient acceleration techniques, and x-ray…
The Anomalous X-ray Pulsars (AXPs) are a small class of pulsars with spin periods in the 6-12 s range, very soft X-ray spectra, secular spin down on time scales of ~10^3-10^5 years, and lack of bright optical counterparts. Two, possibly…
Since the launch of Chandra and XMM-Newton, high-resolution X-ray spectra of cosmic sources of all kinds have become available. These spectra have resulted in major scientific breakthroughs. However, due to the techniques used, in general…
Pulsars are powerful sources of radiation across the electromagnetic spectrum. This paper highlights some theoretical insights into non-thermal, magnetospheric pulsar gamma-ray radiation. These advances have been driven by NASA's Fermi…
Stars over a wide range of masses and evolutionary stages are nowadays known to emit X-rays. This X-ray emission is a unique probe of the most energetic phenomena occurring in the circumstellar environment of these stars, and provides…
Anomalous X-ray Pulsars (AXPs) are a class of rare X-ray pulsars whose energy source has been perplexing for some 20 years. Unlike other, better understood X-ray pulsars, AXPs cannot be powered by rotation or by accretion from a binary…
The field of gamma-ray astronomy has experienced impressive progress over the last decade. Thanks to the advent of a new generation of imaging air Cherenkov telescopes (H.E.S.S., MAGIC, VERITAS) and thanks to the launch of the Fermi-LAT…
Since their first discovery in the late 1960s, Gamma-ray bursts have attracted an exponentially growing interest from the international community due to their central role in the most highly debated open questions of the modern research of…
Gamma-ray Bursts are the most powerful objects in the Universe. Discovered in the 1960's as brief flashes of gamma-radiation, we now know they emit across the entire electromagnetic spectrum, are located in distant galaxies and comprise two…
The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) will be a transformative experiment for gravitational wave astronomy, and, as such, it will offer unique opportunities to address many key astrophysical questions in a completely novel way. The…
Unprecedented bright and intense synchrotron X-rays have been widely used to unravel numerous compelling electronic and structural properties using a large variety of physical techniques, while the puzzling phenomenon is the uncertainties…
Stars have been recognized as optimal laboratories to probe axion properties. In the last decades there have been significant advances in this field due to a better modelling of stellar systems and accurate observational data. In this work…
Since its launch in 2008 June, the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has opened a new era in high-energy astrophysics. The unprecedented sensitivity, angular resolution and effective area of the Large Area Telescope on board Fermi, together…
In no other field of astrophysics has the impact of new instrumentation been as substantial as in the domain of exoplanets. Before 1995 our knowledge about exoplanets was mainly based on philosophical and theoretical considerations. The…
We discuss the anisotropic arrival directions of the ultra high energy cosmic rays detected by Auger which I consider one of the biggest discoverie in astrophysics during the last year.