The THESEUS space mission concept: science case, design and expected performances

By L. Amati, P. O’Brien, D. Götz, E. Bozzo, C. Tenzer, F. Frontera, G. Ghirlanda, C. Labanti, J. Osborne, G. Stratta and 200 more. Advances in Space Research, 2017

172 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract THESEUS is a space mission concept aimed at exploiting Gamma-Ray Bursts for investigating the early Universe and at providing a substantial advancement of multi-messenger and time-domain astrophysics. These goals will be achieved through a unique combination of instruments allowing GRB and X-ray transient detection over a broad field of view (more than 1sr) with 0.5–1 arcmin localization, an energy band extending from several MeV 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 be perfectly suited for addressing the 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, signatures of Pop III stars, sources and physics of re-ionization, and the faint end of the galaxy luminosity function. In addition, it will provide unprecedented capability to monitor the X-ray variable sky, thus detecting, localizing, and identifying the electromagnetic counterparts to sources of gravitational radiation, which may be routinely detected in the late ’20s/early ’30s by next generation facilities like aLIGO/ aVirgo, eLISA, KAGRA, and Einstein Telescope. THESEUS will also provide powerful synergies with the next generation of multi-wavelength observatories (e.g., LSST, ELT, SKA, CTA, ATHENA).

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/df482af0eb558549803f451e13cd4d02a9eee91a

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

Citations in the corpus

Hubble Tension: The Evidence of New Physics (2023, background): “In addition, the e-ROSITA all-sky survey, French–Chinese satellite space-based multi-band astronomical variable objects monitor (SVOM) [529], Einstein Probe (EP) [530], and Transient High-Energy Sky and Early Universe Surveyor (THESEUS) [531] space missions together with ground- and space-based mult”
Science case for the Einstein telescope (2019, methodology): “Mission concept such as THESEUS will enable to detect 20− 40 on-axis short GRB/year with a localization accuracy of 1-5 arcmin up to a redshift of 5 [81, 90].”