Abstract
The proposed THESEUS mission will vastly expand the capabilities to monitor the high-energy sky. It will specifically exploit large samples of gamma-ray bursts to probe the early universe back to the first generation of stars, and to advance multi-messenger astrophysics by detecting and localizing the counterparts of gravitational waves and cosmic neutrino sources. The combination and coordination of these activities with multi-wavelength, multi-messenger facilities expected to be operating in the 2030s will open new avenues of exploration in many areas of astrophysics, cosmology and fundamental physics, thus adding considerable strength to the overall scientific impact of THESEUS and these facilities. We discuss here a number of these powerful synergies and guest observer opportunities.
Highlights
Major discoveries in astrophysics and cosmology over the last decades have benefited greatly from the synergy among space and ground-based facilities over the entireExtended author information available on the last page of the article.Experimental Astronomy electromagnetic spectrum
The other class of short duration gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) has been securely associated with neutron star (NS) compact binary mergers, after the detection of gravitational waves (GW) by the Ligo-Virgo interferometers (GW170817, [1]), and the prompt identification of the electro-magnetic counterpart from γ -rays to radio wavelengths has ushered in the new era of multi-messenger astrophysics
The generation ground-based gravitational wave observatories in the 2030s, such as Einstein Telescope (ET) [42, 43] and Cosmic Explorer (CE) [44, 45], will come online with sensitivities about an order of magnitude better than today’s detectors, and with an observation band extended to lower frequencies [46]
Summary
Extended author information available on the last page of the article. Experimental Astronomy electromagnetic spectrum. Thanks to the wide and deep monitoring of the high-energy sky (SXI+XGIS instruments from 0.3 keV to 10 MeV), with focusing capabilities in the soft Xray (SXI), and an on-board 70 cm infrared telescope (IRT), THESEUS will feed these powerful facilities with GRBs and other selected transient events, for dedicated follow-up observations; THESEUS will respond to triggers from these facilities The combination of such a vast network of complementary information will unleash the full scientific potential of the mission and expand the scientific impact of all these future facilities. It is critical to monitor large areas of sky in real-time to know the current accretion state of either known or new examples of such systems These Athena science requirements are highly synergistic with those of THESEUS, which has a primary science objective to perform an unprecedented real-time, high-cadence, deep monitoring of the X-ray transient universe in order to identify a wide variety of extragalactic and galactic transients and to identify the counterparts to multi-messenger sources. Counterparts of such events found by THESEUS will have location accuracies far superior to those of the multi-messenger observatories and will be observable by Athena in a single pointing
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
