The Future of X-ray Time Domain Surveys

TL;DR

This paper discusses the capabilities and future potential of X-ray time domain surveys, highlighting how current and upcoming observatories can explore variability across a vast range of astrophysical phenomena and timescales.

Contribution

It provides an overview of the current state and future prospects of X-ray time domain surveys, emphasizing science goals and mission designs for advancing the field.

Findings

X-ray observatories can study variability from microseconds to years.

High-energy X-ray data reveals diverse astrophysical phenomena.

Future surveys will expand understanding of the X-ray universe.

Abstract

Modern X-ray observatories yield unique insight into the astrophysical time domain. Each X-ray photon can be assigned an arrival time, an energy and a sky position, yielding sensitive, energy-dependent light curves and enabling time-resolved spectra down to millisecond time-scales. Combining those with multiple views of the same patch of sky (e.g., in the Chandra and XMM-Newton deep fields) so as to extend variability studies over longer baselines, the spectral timing capacity of X-ray observatories then stretch over 10 orders of magnitude at spatial resolutions of arcseconds, and 13 orders of magnitude at spatial resolutions of a degree. A wealth of high-energy time-domain data already exists, and indicates variability on timescales ranging from microseconds to years in a wide variety of objects, including numerous classes of AGN, high-energy phenomena at the Galactic centre, Galactic and extra-Galactic X-ray binaries, supernovae, gamma-ray bursts, stellar flares, tidal disruption flares, and as-yet unknown X-ray variables. This workshop explored the potential of strategic X-ray surveys to probe a broad range of astrophysical sources and phenomena. Here we present the highlights, with an emphasis on the science topics and mission designs that will drive future discovery in the X-ray time domain.