enhanced X-ray Timing and Polarimetry mission (eXTP)

Official website: http://extp.ihep.ac.cn/.

The enhanced X-ray Timing and Polarimetry mission (eXTP) is a science mission designed to study the state of matter under extreme conditions of density, gravity, and magnetism. Its primary goals are the determination of the equation of state of matter at supra-nuclear density, the measurement of QED effects in highly magnetized stars, and the study of accretion in the strong-field regime of gravity. And its primary targets include isolated and binary neutron stars, strong magnetic field systems like magnetars, and stellar-mass and supermassive black holes.

The mission carries a unique and unprecedented suite of state-of-the-art scientific instruments for the first time enabling the simultaneous spectral-timing-polarimetry studies of cosmic sources in the energy range from 0.5-10 keV. Key elements of the payload are:

the Spectroscopic Focusing Array (SFA):

a set of 6 X-ray optics operating in the 0.5-10 keV energy band with a focal length of 5.25 m and field-of-view (FoV) of 16 arcmin each and a total effective area of ∼4900cm² and 3400cm² at 1.5 keV and 6 keV, respectively. The telescopes are each equipped with Silicon Drift Detectors offering ~150 eV spectral resolution.

the Polarimetry Focusing Array (PFA):

a set of 3 X-ray telescopes, achieving a total effective area of 340cm² at 3 keV, equipped with imaging gas pixel photoelectric polarimeters. The FoV of each telescope is 9 × 9 arcmin and the operating energy range is 2-10 keV.