The STROBE-X Wide Field Monitor Instrument

TL;DR

The STROBE-X WFM is a proposed wide-angle X-ray monitor with unprecedented sensitivity and coverage, designed to detect and analyze transient X-ray phenomena across a third of the sky.

Contribution

It introduces the WFM instrument as the most capable wide-angle X-ray monitor, with broad sky coverage and energy sensitivity from 2 to 50 keV, for diverse astrophysical applications.

Findings

Designed to identify X-ray transients and capture spectral/timing changes

Covers one third of the sky with 50% mask coding

Energy sensitivity from 2 to 50 keV

Abstract

The Wide Field Monitor (WFM) is one of the three instruments on the Spectroscopic Time-Resolving Observatory for Broadband Energy X-rays (STROBE-X) mission, which was proposed in response to the NASA 2023 call for a probe class mission. The WFM is a coded-mask camera system that would be the most scientifically capable wide-angle monitor ever flown. The field of view covers one third of the sky, to 50 percent mask coding, and the energy sensitivity is 2 to 50 keV. The WFM is designed to identify new X-ray transients and to capture spectral and timing changes in known sources with data of unprecedented quality. Science applications cover diverse classes, in including X-ray bursts that coincide with gravitational wave detections, gamma ray bursts and their transition from prompt emission to afterglow, subluminous GRBs that may signal shock breakout in supernovae, state transitions in accreting compact objects and their jets, bright flares in fast X-ray transients, accretion onset in transitional pulsars, and coronal flares from many types of active stars.