Surveying the Hot Baryons Within the Milky Way
Image credit: Jeremy Sanders, Hermann Brunner and the eSASS team (MPE); Eugene Churazov, Marat Gilfanov (on behalf of IKI)
Context:
The galactic ecosystem is one of the three major themes highlighted in the Astro 2020 Decadal Survey in the US (issued in Nov. 2021). Hot baryons, best observed with X-ray space missions, play a critical role in the galactic ecosystem. They trace the feedback processes from supermassive black holes (SMBH) and stars, which drive the growth of galaxies. Nonetheless, the detailed physics of both feedback processes is poorly understood.
The Milky Way, our mother galaxy, is a critical template for understanding the galactic ecosystem in general. The eROSITA instrument aboard the Russian–German Spectrum-Roentgen-Gamma (SRG) mission provided the best X-ray image of the Milky Way with unprecedented spatial resolution and sensitivity.
The Chinese National Medium- and Long-Term Development Plan for Space Science (issued in Oct. 2024) prioritized the X-ray study of hot baryons, especially in the roadmap from now to 2027. DIffuse X-ray Explorer (DIXE) is a proposed high-resolution X-ray spectroscopic sky surveyor on the China Space Station (CSS). DIXE will bring high-resolution X-ray spectroscopy to sky survey observations. This enables us to probe the physical properties (e.g., temperature, density, elemental abundances, kinematics) of the hot baryons within the Milky Way, including but not limited to solar wind charge exchange plasmas within the Solar system, local hot bubbles, Galactic supernova remnants, eROSITA bubbles, and circumgalactic medium. DIXE's high-resolution X-ray spectra will complement to high-resolution imaging data provided by eROSITA, SMILE, and Einstein Probe.
Obectives:
b) Present the scientific goals and instrument features of SMlLE and DIXE
c) ldentify common interests and promote international collaborations
Date: 09-10 June, 2025
Conveners:
| Junjie Mao | Tsinghua University, China |
| Ping Zhou | Nanjing University, China |
| Johan Comparat | Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Germany |
| Gabriele Ponti | Brera Astronomical Observatory, National Institute of Astrophysics, Italy |
Forum Handbook
Forum Agenda
Participants List
Group Photo
Forum Presentations
