November 16 , 9am - 10am EST
The X-ray Polarimeter Mission XPoSat
Biswajit Paul (Raman Research Institute)
XPoSat (X-ray Polarimeter Satellite) is a mission dedicated for study of polarisation of cosmic X-ray sources. The X-ray polarisation measurements will be carried out with a Thomson scattering X-ray polarimeter instrument POLIX and simultaneous timing and spectroscopic measurements will be carried out with a co-aligned semiconductor based X-ray detectors system XSPECT. Energy bands of the two X-ray instruments are 8-30 keV for POLIX and 0.8-15.0 for XSEPCT. The polarisation measurement will be performed using anisotropic Thomson scattering of polarized X-rays and this will be enabled by spinning the satellite around the viewing axis of POLIX during the source observations. Being a dedicated X-ray polarisation mission in this unexplored energy band, XPoSat is poised to give us glimpses of a new frontier in high energy astrophysics and also allow many in-depth investigations of astrophysical processes in neutron stars and black hole sources. The instrument designs, some special aspects of the mission, and some of the key scientific issues will be discussed.