Kavli Affiliate: Sven Herrmann
| First 5 Authors: Elena Orlando, Eugenio Bottacini, Alexander Moiseev, Arash Bodaghee, Werner Collmar
| Summary:
The sky at MeV energies is currently poorly explored. Here we present an
innovative mission concept and we outline the scientific motivation for
combining a coded mask and a Compton telescope. The Galactic Explorer with a
Coded Aperture Mask Compton Telescope (GECCO) is a novel concept for a
next-generation telescope covering hard X-ray and soft gamma-ray energies. The
potential and importance of this approach that will bridge the observational
gap in the MeV energy range are presented. With the unprecedented angular
resolution of the coded mask telescope combined with the sensitive Compton
telescope, a mission such as GECCO will finally disentangle the discrete
sources from the truly diffuse emission, unveiling the origin of the gamma-ray
Galactic center excess and the Fermi Bubbles, and uncovering properties of
low-energy cosmic rays, and their propagation in the Galaxy. Individual
Galactic and extragalactic sources will be detected, which will also allow
studies of source populations. Nuclear and annihilation lines will be spatially
and spectrally resolved from the continuum emission and from sources,
addressing the role of low-energy cosmic rays in star formation and galaxy
evolution, the origin of the 511 keV positron line, fundamental physics, and
the chemical enrichment in the Galaxy. It will also detect explosive transient
gamma-ray sources, which will enable identifying and studying the astrophysical
objects that produce gravitational waves and neutrinos in a multi-messenger
context. A GECCO mission will provide essential contributions to the areas "New
Messengers and New Physics" and "Unveiling the Drivers of Galaxy Growth"
emphasized in the Decadal Report on Astronomy and Astrophysics 2020.
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