Chasing X-ray counterparts of gravitational wave events with Athena
Abstract
Athena, the next large X-ray observatory in the Cosmic Vision Program of the European Space Agency, constitutes an improvement in performance with respect to any existing of planned X-ray missions by more than one order of magnitude on several parameter spaces simultaneously: collecting effective area, sensitivity to the detection of weak emission lines, X-ray survey speed, accumulated spectroscopic counts for transient X-ray events, just to mention a few. Its scientific payload is therefore ideally suited to provide breakthrough contributions to multi-messenger astronomy in the 2030s. In this paper we summarize the main areas where Athena is expected to deliver transformational discoveries by identifying electromagnetic counterparts of Gravitational Wave events: the high-energy counterparts of neutron star-neutron star merger events; and the high-energy counterparts of super-massive black hole mergers to be discovered by LISA.
- Publication:
-
Memorie della Societa Astronomica Italiana
- Pub Date:
- 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019MmSAI..90...87G