Studying microquasars with IXPE
Abstract
While timing and spectroscopy of microquasars are well established techniques, X-ray polarimetry is lagging behind, despite its widely recognized importance in providing vital information on the phsyics and geometry of these sources, including strong gravity effects. Happily, this will change very soon thanks to the approval by NASA of IXPE (the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer), the next mission inthe SMEX program, to be launched in 2020.In this contribution, the main scientific results expected by IXPE on microquasars will be discussed, with particular emphasys on the possibility to measure the black hole spin via energy-dependent polarization observations.
- Publication:
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AAS/High Energy Astrophysics Division #16
- Pub Date:
- August 2017
- Bibcode:
- 2017HEAD...1630005M