Witnessing A New Era of X-ray Astronomy
报告人:
Wei Cui is a professor in the Department of Astronomy at Tsinghua University (in China) and American Physical Society Fellow. He obtained his PhD degree in physics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1994, and then joined MIT as a Research Scientist in the same year, to work on the construction and operation of the All-Sky Monitor (ASM) on the RXTE satellite and carry out research on compact objects based on RXTE observations. In 2000, he joined the faculty of the Department of Physics at Purdue University as an assistant professor, and became a full professor in 2009. He participated in the construction and operation of VERITAS, a state-of-the-art TeV gamma-ray observatory, and re-focused his research on cosmic particle accelerators. In 2016, he accepted a joint appointment with Tsinghua University as Professor of Physics, and then joined the university fully in 2018 as a professor in the newly-formed Department of Astronomy. He is the PI of the proposed Hot Universe Baryon Surveyor (HUBS) mission. His present research interests lie mainly in instrumentation for astronomical applications and galaxy ecosystems.摘要:
With the imminent launch of XRISM, the field of X-ray astronomy is about to enter a new era of spatially-resolved, high-resolution spectroscopy, as driven by the technologies of a novel X-ray imaging spectrometer based on an array of microcalorimeters. As shown by sounding-rocket experiments and the Hitomi satellite in the past, the prospect of such a spectrometer in bringing major scientific breakthroughs is highly exciting. All eyes will be on XRISM to witness the full potential of microcalorimeters with a dedicated X-ray mission. Looking further into the future, ESA has approved the Athena satellite for launch in the early 2030s in Europe, while key technology development is ongoing for a number of other X-ray mission proposed in China, Japan, and US. These missions will employ a new generation of microcalorimeters, based on superconducting technologies, which is expected to deliver even more superior spectral resolution. In this talk, I will briefly review key milestones in the development of X-ray astronomy, leading to the new era of the field, and highlight some of the key unresolved scientific issues that are expected to be addressed in the new era.