Pharos: A High Resolution Intergalactic Explorer for the Soft X-ray

Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy

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Scientific paper

We present a mission concept for high resolution X-ray spectroscopy with a resolving power, R > 6000 at λ > 21 Å, (c.f. R < 1000 for Chandra and XMM-Newton). Such a mission could be small and have a rapid response allowing us to `X-ray the Universe' using the afterglows of Gamma-ray Bursts (GRBs) and the prompt of ``X-ray Rich Bursts, in addition to quasars, to illuminate the `Cosmic Web', which is predicted to contain most of the baryons in the nearby Universe.
The combination of moderate effective area below E ˜ 0.9 keV (A ˜ 1000-2000 cm2) and high spectral resolution (Δ v < 50 km/s at ≥ 21 Å) will allow us to search for faint metal absorption lines in the intervening Warm-Hot Intergalactic Medium (WHIM) as well as the GRB host galaxy Inter-Stellar Matter (ISM), and to resolve internal gas and galaxy motions within larger structures. This would provide probes of the metal enrichment and heating histories of both the WHIM and the high redshift ISM.
M.E. acknowledges support by the NASA contract NAS8-39073 (CXC)

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