The Transient High-Energy Sky and Early Universe Surveyor (THESEUS)

by Dr Lorenzo Amati (IASF - Bologna)

Thursday 21 Jun 2018, 16:00 → 17:00 Europe/Rome

1G09 (Dipartimento di Fisica "Ettore Pancini")

The Transient High-Energy Sky and Early Universe Surveyor (THESEUS) is a space mission concept, developed by a large international collaboration and recently selected by ESA for a phase 0/A study within the Cosmic Vision - M5 selection process. THESEUS aims at exploiting Gamma-Ray Bursts for investigating the early Universe and at providing a substantial advancement of multi-messenger and time-domain astrophysics, also in strong sinergy with the large observing facilities of the future. These goals will be achieved through a unique combination of instruments allowing GRBs and X-ray transients detection over a broad FOV (more than 1sr) with 0.5-1 arcmin localization, an energy band extending from several MeVs down to 0.3 keV and high sensitivity to transient sources in the soft X-ray domain, as well as on-board prompt (few minutes) follow-up with a 0.7 m class IR telescope with both imaging and spectroscopic capabilities. THESEUS will address main open issues in cosmology such as, e.g., star formation rate and metallicity evolution of the inter-stellar and intra-galactic medium up to redshift 10-12, signatures of Pop III stars, sources and physics of re-ionization, and the faint end of the galaxy luminosity function. In addition, THESEUS will provide a fundamental contribution to time-domain and multi-messenger astrophysics by detecting, localizing, and identifying the electromagnetic counterparts to sources of gravitational radiation, which will be routinely detected in the late '20s / early '30s by next generation facilities like aLIGO/aVirgo, eLISA, KAGRA, and Einstein Telescope and, more in general, of several classes of transient sources, providing an ideal sinergy also with the large multi-wavelength observatories of the near future like LSST, ELT, TMT, SKA, CTA, ATHENA).