Yost-Swift Gamma-ray Burst Science and Capabilities Needed to EXIST

Abstract

The exhilerating results from Swift in its first year of operations have opened a new era of exploration of the high energy universe. The surge to higher redshifts of the Gamma-ray bursts now imaged with increased sensitivity establishes them as viable cosmic probes of the early universe. Wide-field coded aperture imaging with solid-state pixel detectors (Cd-Zn-Te) has been also established as the optimum approach for GRB discovery and location as well as to conduct sensitive full-sky hard X-ray sky surveys. I outline the current and future major science questions likely to dominate the post-Swift era for GRBs and several related disciplines and the mission requirements to tackle these. The EXIST mission, under study for NASA's Black Hole Finder Probe (BHFP) in the Beyond Einstein Program, could achieve these objectives as the Next Generation GRB Mission with 'ultimate' sensitivity and wide-field survey capability. Analysis tools for processing Swift /BAT slew data are under development at CfA and will both test EXIST scanning imaging and provide new data on GRBs and transients.

Study of thick CZT detectors for X-ray and Gamma-ray astronomy

“…4 The median denotes the median resolution of all tested pixels. 5 Width of energy resolution distribution. σ 0.9 0.5 0.5 0.9 0.5 1 OB denotes an MHB detector from the company Orbotech.…”

“…A number of proposed future experiments will use thicker (≥0.5 cm) CZT detectors. The EXIST (Energetic X-ray Imaging Survey Telescope) mission is a proposed all sky survey hard X-ray survey telescope that would use ~11,250 CZT detectors (each: 0.5×2.0×2.0 cm 3 ) in a coded mask imager with a detector area of 4.5 m 2 [5]. HX-POL is a proposed hard X-ray polarimeter which would combine a stack of thick Si detectors as low-Z Compton scatter medium and CZT detectors (each: 0.5×3.9×3.9 cm 3 ) as high-Z photoeffect absorber [6].…”

Multimessenger astronomy with the Einstein Telescope

“…The EXIST mission concept is specifically optimized for study of high-z GRBs. EXIST promises the detection of ∼600 GRBs/yr and it intends to carry out a rich program targeting transient-source science [12,43].…”

Fabrication and test of pixelated CZT detectors with different pixel pitches and thicknesses

“…The material finds applications in medical, homeland security, and in astrophysics and particle physics application. The EXIST (Energetic X-ray Imaging Survey Telescope) mission is a proposed all sky survey hard X-ray survey telescope that would use ~14,000 CZT detectors in a coded mask imager with a detector area of 5.5 m 2 [6]. The EXIST mission would use 0.5×2×2 cm 3 CZT detectors each read out with 1024 pixels at a pitch of 0.6 mm.…”