The SXI telescope on board EXIST: scientific performances

TL;DR

The SXI telescope on board EXIST is designed to perform broadband X-ray observations, surveys, and transient monitoring, significantly enhancing the study of high-energy astrophysical sources like AGNs and GRBs with unprecedented sensitivity.

Contribution

This paper presents the scientific performance and design status of the SXI telescope, highlighting its capabilities for broadband studies and sky surveys in the EXIST mission.

Findings

SXI provides broadband coverage from 0.1 to 10 keV.

It enables detailed spectral and variability studies of AGNs and GRBs.

It will conduct a sky survey with a limiting flux of 5x10^{-14} cgs.

Abstract

The SXI telescope is one of the three instruments on board EXIST, a multiwavelength observatory in charge of performing a global survey of the sky in hard X-rays searching for Supermassive Black Holes. One of the primary objectives of EXIST is also to study with unprecedented sensitivity the most unknown high energy sources in the Universe, like high redshift GRBs, which will be pointed promptly by the Spacecraft by autonomous trigger based on hard X-ray localization on board. The recent addition of a soft X-ray telescope to the EXIST payload complement, with an effective area of ~950 cm2 in the energy band 0.2-3 keV and extended response up to 10 keV will allow to make broadband studies from 0.1 to 600 keV. In particular, investigations of the spectra components and states of AGNs and monitoring of variability of sources, study of the prompt and afterglow emission of GRBs since the early phases, which will help to constrain the emission models and finally, help the identification of sources in the EXIST hard X-ray survey and the characterization of the transient events detected. SXI will also perform surveys: a scanning survey with sky coverage of about 2pi and limiting flux of 5x10^{-14}cgs plus other serendipitous. We give an overview of the SXI scientific performance and also describe the status of its design emphasizing how it has been derived by the scientific requirements.