Abstract
ABSTRACT With the advent of the nanosat/cubesat revolution, new opportunities have appeared to develop and launch small (∼1000 cm3), low-cost (∼US$ 1M) experiments in space in very short time frames (∼2 yr). In the field of high-energy astrophysics, in particular, it is a considerable challenge to design instruments with compelling science and competitive capabilities that can fit in very small satellite buses, such as a cubesat platform, and operate them with very limited resources. Here, we describe a hard X-ray (30–200 keV) experiment, LECX (‘Localizador de Explosões Cósmicas de Raios X’ – Locator of X-Ray Cosmic Explosions), that is capable of detecting and localizing within a few degrees events like gamma-ray bursts and other explosive phenomena in a 2U-cubesat platform, at a rate of ∼5 events per year. In the current gravitational wave era of astronomy, a constellation or swarm of small spacecraft carrying instruments such as LECX can be a very cost-effective way to search for electromagnetic counterparts of gravitational wave events produced by the coalescence of compact objects.
Highlights
The design of competitive space instruments to detect X- and gamma-ray fluxes from astrophysical sources has always been a challenge due to several limitations, especially on weight, size, and power consumption
In order to foresee the performance of LECX in orbit and its sensitivity to cosmic explosions, we need to have a good estimate of the background radiation the detectors will measure
We have considered the LECX instrument in a near-equatorial low-Earth orbit (LEO) and an incident flux coming from a GRB in a given direction
Summary
The design of competitive space instruments to detect X- and gamma-ray fluxes from astrophysical sources has always been a challenge due to several limitations, especially on weight, size, and power consumption. We describe an instrument developed for a cubesat platform that is capable of detecting and locating relatively strong cosmic explosions that manifest themselves electromagnetically mainly in the hard X-ray/low-energy gamma-ray range. The experiment, called ‘Localizador de Explosoes Cosmicas de Raios X’ (LECX – Portuguese for Locator of X-ray Cosmic Explosions), will be sensitive enough to detect and localize within a few degrees events like the well-known gamma-ray bursts (GRBs – see Zhang 2018) in the 30–200 keV energy range. In the recently inaugurated multimessenger astrophysics era, it is of paramount importance that wide-field space instruments constantly patrol the sky in order to instantly detect electromagnetic (EM) counterparts of gravitational wave (GW) and/or neutrino cosmic bursting events. LECX: a cubesat experiment to detect and localize cosmic explosions in hard X-rays 4853.
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