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Register a new userThe Hot and Energetic Universe: A White Paper presenting the science theme motivating the Athena+ mission
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Kirpal Nandra
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This White Paper, submitted to the recent ESA call for science themes to define its future large missions, advocates the need for a transformational leap in our understanding of two key questions in astrophysics: 1) How does ordinary matter assemble into the large scale structures that we see today? 2) How do black holes grow and shape the Universe? Hot gas in clusters, groups and the intergalactic medium dominates the baryonic content of the local Universe. To understand the astrophysical processes responsible for the formation and assembly of these large structures, it is necessary to measure their physical properties and evolution. This requires spatially resolved X-ray spectroscopy with a factor 10 increase in both telescope throughput and spatial resolving power compared to currently planned facilities. Feedback from supermassive black holes is an essential ingredient in this process and in most galaxy evolution models, but it is not well understood. X-ray observations can uniquely reveal the mechanisms launching winds close to black holes and determine the coupling of the energy and matter flows on larger scales. Due to the effects of feedback, a complete understanding of galaxy evolution requires knowledge of the obscured growth of supermassive black holes through cosmic time, out to the redshifts where the first galaxies form. X-ray emission is the most reliable way to reveal accreting black holes, but deep survey speed must improve by a factor ~100 over current facilities to perform a full census into the early Universe. The Advanced Telescope for High Energy Astrophysics (Athena+) mission provides the necessary performance (e.g. angular resolution, spectral resolution, survey grasp) to address these questions and revolutionize our understanding of the Hot and Energetic Universe. These capabilities will also provide a powerful observatory to be used in all areas of astrophysics.
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The Advanced Telescope for High Energy Astrophysics (Athena) is the X-ray observatory large mission selected by the European Space Agency (ESA), within its Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 programme, to address the Hot and Energetic Universe scientific theme (Nandra et al. 2013), and it is provisionally due for launch in the early 2030s. The Square Kilometer Array (SKA) is the next generation radio observatory and consists of two telescopes, one comprised of dishes operating at mid frequencies (SKA1-MID) and located in South Africa, and the other comprised of Log-Periodic antennas operating at low radio frequencies (SKA1-LOW), which will be located in Australia (Braun et al. 2017). The scientific commissioning of the radio telescope is planned to begin in 2021-2022. The SKA-Athena Synergy Team (SAST) has been tasked to single out the potential scientific synergies between Athena and SKA. The astrophysical community was involved in this exercise primarily through a dedicated SKA-Athena Synergy Workshop, which took place on April 24-25, 2017 at SKAO, Jodrell Bank, Manchester. The final result of the synergy exercise, this White Paper, describes in detail a number of scientific opportunities that will be opened up by the combination of Athena and SKA, these include: 1. the Cosmic Dawn; 2. the Evolution of black holes and galaxies; 3. Active galaxy feedback in galaxy clusters; 4. Non-thermal phenomena in galaxy clusters; 5. Detecting the cosmic web; 6. Black-hole accretion physics and astrophysical transients; 7. Galactic astronomy: stars, planets, pulsars and supernovae.
The Advanced Telescope for High ENergy Astrophysics (Athena) is the X-ray observatory mission selected by ESA within its Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 programme to address the Hot and Energetic Universe scientific theme. The ESO-Athena Synergy Team (EAST) has been tasked to single out the potential scientific synergies between Athena and optical/near-infrared (NIR) and sub/mm ground based facilities, in particular those of ESO (i.e., the VLT and ELT, ALMA and APEX), by producing a White Paper to identify and develop the: 1. needs to access ESO ground-based facilities to achieve the formulated Athena science objectives; 2. needs to access Athena to achieve the formulated science objectives of ESO facilities contemporary to Athena; 3. science areas where the synergetic use of Athena and ESO facilities in the late 2020s will result in scientific added value. Community input to the process happened primarily via a dedicated ESO - Athena Synergy Workshop that took place on Sept. 14 - 16, 2016 at ESO, Garching. This White Paper presents the results of the EASTs work, sorted by synergy area, and deals with the following topics: 1. the Hot Universe: Early groups and clusters and their evolution, Physics of the Intracluster medium, Missing baryons in cosmic filaments; 2. the Energetic Universe: Supermassive black hole (SMBH) history, SMBH accretion disks, Active Galactic Nuclei feedback - Molecular outflows, Ultra-fast outflows, Accretion Physics, Transient Science; 3. Observatory Science: Star Formation, Stars. It then discusses the optical-NIR-sub-mm perspective by providing details on VLT/MOONS, the E-ELT instruments, in particular the MOS, VISTA/4MOST, the ESO and ALMA archives, future ALMA and ESO developments, and finally the (likely) ESO - Athena astronomical scene in the 2020s. (abridged)
The Athena+ X-ray mirror will provide a collecting area of 2 m^2 at 1 keV and an angular resolution of 5 arc seconds Half Energy Width. The manufacture and performance of this mirror is of paramount importance to the success of the mission. In order to provide the large collecting area a single aperture of diameter ~3 m must be densely populated with grazing incidence X-ray optics and to achieve the high angular resolution these optics must be of extremely high precision and aligned to tight tolerances. A large field of view of ~40 arc minutes diameter is possible using a combination of innovative technology and careful optical design. The large collecting area and large field of view deliver an impressive grasp of 0.5 deg^2 m^2 at 1 keV and the angular resolution will result in a source position accuracy of better than 1 arc second. The Silicon Pore Optics technology (SPO) which will deliver the impressive performance of the Athena+ mirror was developed uniquely by ESA and Cosine Measurement Systems specifically for the next generation of X-ray observatories and Athena+ represents the culmination of over 10 years of intensive technology developments. In this paper we describe the X-ray optics design, using SPO, which makes Athena+ possible for launch in 2028.
The backbone of the large-scale structure of the Universe is determined by processes on a cosmological scale and by the gravitational interaction of the dominant dark matter. However, the mobile baryon population shapes the appearance of these structures. Theory predicts that most of the baryons reside in vast unvirialized filamentary structures that connect galaxy groups and clusters, but the observational evidence is currently lacking. Because the majority of the baryons are supposed to exist in a large-scale, hot and dilute gaseous phase, X-rays provide the ideal tool to progress our understanding. Observations with the Athena+ X-ray Integral Field Unit will reveal the location, chemical composition, physical state and dynamics of the active population of baryons.
The Wide Field Imager (WFI) is one of the two scientific instruments proposed for the Athena+ X-ray observatory. It will provide imaging in the 0.1-15 keV band over a wide field, simultaneously with spectrally and time-resolved photon counting. The instrument is designed to make optimal use of the grasp (collecting area times solid angle product) provided by the optical design of the Athena+ mirror system (Willingale et al. 2013), by combining a sensitive approx. 40 diameter field of view (baseline; 50 goal) DEPFET detector with a pixel size properly sampling the angular resolution of 5 arc sec on-axis (half energy width).This synthesis makes the WFI a very powerful survey instrument, significantly surpassing currently existing capabilities (Nandra et al. 2013; Aird et al. 2013). In addition, the WFI will provide unprecedented simultaneous high-time resolution and high count rate capabilities for the observation of bright sources with low pile-up and high efficiency. In this paper, we summarize the instrument design, the status of the technology development, and the baseline performance.
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