E. Bozzo, J. W. den Herder, M. Feroci, L. Stella, on the behalf of the LOFT consortium
The Large Observatory For X-ray Timing, LOFT, was selected by the European
Space Agency as one of the four Cosmic Vision M3 candidate missions to compete
for a launch opportunity at the start of the 2020s. Thanks to an innovative
design and the development of large-area monolithic silicon drift detectors,
the Large Area Detector (LAD) on board LOFT will operate in the 2-30 keV range
(up to 50 keV in expanded mode), and achieve an effective area of ~10 m^2 at 8
keV, a time resolution of ~10 {\mu}s, and a spectral resolution of ~260 eV
(FWHM at 6 keV). These characteristics make LOFT a perfectly suited instrument
to perform high-time-resolution X-ray observations of collapsed objects in our
galaxy and brightest supermassive black holes in active galactic nuclei. LOFT
will yield unprecedented information on strongly curved spacetimes and matter
under extreme conditions of pressure and magnetic field strength, thus
addressing two of the fundamental questions of the Cosmic Vision Theme "Matter
under extreme conditions": does matter orbiting close to the event horizon
follow the predictions of general relativity? What is the equation of state of
matter in neutron stars?
View original:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1112.5473
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