The soft X-ray imager on THESEUS: the transient high energy survey and early universe surveyor
Paul O'Brien, Ian Hutchinson, Hannah Natasha Lerman, Charlotte H., Feldman, Melissa McHugh, Alexander Lodge, Richard Willingale, Andy Beardmore,, Roisin Speight, Paul Drumm

TL;DR
The THESEUS mission's Soft X-ray Imager (SXI) will significantly enhance transient sky surveys and early universe studies by using advanced wide-field focusing optics to detect and localize high-energy transients with unprecedented sensitivity.
Contribution
This paper introduces the SXI instrument on THESEUS, a novel wide-field soft X-ray imager utilizing Lobster-eye optics and CMOS detectors for improved transient detection.
Findings
SXI will image 0.5 steradians instantaneously.
It will detect hundreds of transients annually.
Provides arcminute localization accuracy.
Abstract
We are entering a new era for high energy astrophysics with the use of new technology to increase our ability to both survey and monitor the sky. The Soft X-ray Imager (SXI) instrument on the THESEUS mission will revolutionize transient astronomy by using wide-field focusing optics to increase the sensitivity to fast transients by several orders of magnitude. The THESEUS mission is under Phase A study by ESA for its M5 opportunity. THESEUS will carry two large area monitors utilizing Lobster-eye (the SXI instrument) and coded-mask (the XGIS instrument) technologies, and an optical-IR telescope to provide source redshifts using multi-band imaging and spectroscopy. The SXI will operate in the soft (0.3-5 keV) X-ray band, and consists of two identical modules, each comprising 64 Micro Pore Optics and 8 large-format CMOS detectors. It will image a total field of view of 0.5 steradian…
Peer Reviews
No public reviews on file for this paper yet. If you reviewed it on a platform where reviews are public (OpenReview, ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML), you can paste yours below so the community can read it here.
Videos
No videos yet. Explain this paper in a talk, walkthrough, or lecture? Add one.
