The Neutron star Interior Composition ExploreR (NICER): an Explorer mission of opportunity for soft x-ray timing spectroscopy

By K. Gendreau, Z. Arzoumanian, T. Okajima. Other Conferences, 2012

286 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The Neutron star Interior Composition ExploreR (NICER) is a proposed NASA Explorer Mission of Opportunity dedicated to the study of the extraordinary gravitational, electromagnetic, and nuclear-physics environments embodied by neutron stars. NICER will explore the exotic states of matter within neutron stars, where density and pressure are higher than in atomic nuclei, confronting theory with unique observational constraints. NICER will enable rotation-resolved spectroscopy of the thermal and non-thermal emissions of neutron stars in the soft (0.2–12 keV) X-ray band with unprecedented sensitivity, probing interior structure, the origins of dynamic phenomena, and the mechanisms that underlie the most powerful cosmic particle accelerators known. NICER will achieve these goals by deploying, following launch in December 2016, an X-ray timing and spectroscopy instrument as an attached payload aboard the International Space Station (ISS). A robust design compatible with the ISS visibility, vibration, and contamination environments allows NICER to exploit established infrastructure with low risk. Grazing-incidence optics coupled with silicon drift detectors, actively pointed for a full hemisphere of sky coverage, will provide photon-counting spectroscopy and timing registered to GPS time and position, with high throughput and relatively low background. In addition to advancing a vital multi-wavelength approach to neutron star studies through coordination with radio and γ-ray observations, NICER will provide a rapid-response capability for targeting of transients, continuity in X-ray timing astrophysics investigations post-RXTE through a proposed Guest Observer program, and new discovery space in soft X-ray timing science.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Ocean Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6cdeab45960a5d93e91512a521e16ee8c36317aa

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. Paolo Pani
2. Kent Yagi
3. V. Cardoso
4. N. Yunes
5. Emanuele Berti
6. Carlos A. R. Herdeiro
7. Eugen Radu
8. R. Brito

In Ocean Engineering

1. J. Lattimer
2. Emanuele Berti
3. E. Barausse
4. P. Marchant
5. E. Bauer
6. B. Paxton
7. N. Yunes
8. R. O’Shaughnessy

Citations in the corpus

• EQUATION OF STATE AND NEUTRON STAR PROPERTIES CONSTRAINED BY NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND OBSERVATION (2013, background): “Additional radius measurements from the LOFT (Feroci et al. 2012) and NICER (Gendreau et al. 2012) X-ray missions are therefore eagerly anticipated.”
• Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics ( ): Convective Boundaries, Element Diffusion, and Massive Star Explosions (2017, background): “…spectroscopy of the thermal and nonthermal emissions of neutron stars in the soft X-ray band with over 15 million seconds of exposures (Gendreau et al. 2012; Arzoumanian et al. 2014; Gendreau et al. 2016), opening a new window into the interior structure of and the dynamics that…”
• Approximate Universal Relations for Neutron Stars and Quark Stars (2016, background): “For example, the NICER [92, 93] and LOFT [94–96] missions aim to detect X-rays emitted from the surface of hot spots on millisecond pulsars.”
• Testing general relativity with present and future astrophysical observations (2015, background): “This analysis would reveal whether future X-ray observations with NICER [567] and LOFT [402, 568] could constrain deviations from GR (cf. [569]).”