ESA THESEUS and Czech participation

Abstract

© 2020 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim The recent status of the European Space Agency's (ESA) THESEUS (Transient High-Energy Sources and Early Universe Surveyor) project and the recent and expected Czech participation in this project are briefly presented and discussed. THESEUS is a mission concept proposed in response to the ESA's call for medium-size mission (M5) within the Cosmic Vision Programme and selected by ESA on May 7, 2018, to enter an assessment phase A/0 study. The expected Czech participation is on the Soft X-ray Imager (SXI) and a set of four lobster-eye (LE) telescopes, covering a total field of view (FOV) of 1 sr with source location accuracy better than 1–2 arcmin and energy coverage 0.3–6 keV. We also show the prospects of detecting and observing cataclysmic variables (CVs) with the hard X-ray imaging spectrometer (XGIS) and SXI. Since the X-ray spectrum largely determines what emission components and mechanisms can be observed, a combination of these instruments will be very useful. Also if we concentrate on the long-term activity of CVs, it will even be meaningful to use the observations of CVs located in the wide FOVs of XGIS and SXI when searching for and observing other types of events such as gamma-ray bursts.