講題:Exploring the extreme Universe with a new generation of telescopes 摘要:Experimental high energy astrophysics probes the most energetic and exotic objects and locations in our Universe by using a variety of X-ray, gamma-ray, and cosmic-ray instruments. These high-energy sources span many orders of magnitude in size and energetics, from cosmic gamma-ray bursts and supermassive black holes to supernovae and compact objects in our Galaxy. The underlying physical processes in these sources are often similar and usually inaccessible in a laboratory. But at the same time, many of the observations have important implications for fundamental physics. Therefore, a key to these studies is to develop and utilize novel instruments with excellent sensitivity and resolution. A current generation, NuSTAR, and a next generation telescope, COSI, which are and will be revolutionizing the observation of high-energy astrophysics phenomena, will be introduced here. (1) The Compton Spectrometer and Imager (COSI) is a balloon-borne soft gamma-ray (0.2-5 MeV) telescope designed to study astrophysical sources of nuclear-line emission and gamma-ray polarization. COSI employs a compact Compton telescope design, imaging gamma-rays through their scattering history in novel 3D-tracking Germanium detectors. As a balloon payload, this telescope performs sensitive observations of positron annihilation, nucleosynthesis, compact objects, GRBs, and AGN. (2) The Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) is the first focusing high energy X-ray satellite in orbit (launched in June 2012), providing more than two orders of magnitude improvement in sensitivity compared to previous high energy missions. NuSTAR's primary science goals include conducting a survey of black holes, mapping young supernovae explosions, studying cosmic accelerators, and identifying high energy sources in our Galaxy. In this talk, I will present our current achievements with both instruments and future research plans based on these efforts. |
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