Speaker
Description
The future of gamma-ray missions is currently under discussion. The FIGSAG Report highlights science cases that can only be addressed with future gamma-ray missions and primarily points toward the need for large payloads to achieve sensitivities exceeding Fermi by over an order of magnitude in both the MeV and GeV regimes in order to answer key questions about blazar jets and build a pulsar timing array to capture supermassive black hole mergers. However, in writing the report, it also became clear that a single technology will not be well suited to answer all of the profound questions posed in the gamma rays. While a high-effective area and a large field of view is needed for some questions, high angular resolution is needed to answer others.
COSI is a Small Explorer class mission expected to launch in 2027. It will survey the soft gamma-ray sky in 0.2-5 MeV, with a primary field of view of >25% of the sky instantaneously. Its germanium detectors were specifically designed for high energy resolution to focus on the study of annihilation and nuclear lines. COSI will image the Galaxy in 511 keV and several nuclear lines to determine substructure, especially in the Galactic Bulge. Looking into the future, COSI will be a pathfinder for both, future missions with focussing optics optimized for deep, narrow-field observations, and missions with large effective area to observe the whole gamma-ray sky.
| Career stage | Tenured mid-to-late-career researcher |
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