XIPE: the X-ray Imaging Polarimetry Explorer
Creators: name: Soffitta, Paolo
name: Barcons, Xavier
name: Bellazzini, Ronaldo
name: Braga, João
name: Costa, Enrico
name: Fraser, George W.
name: Gburek, Szymon
name: Huovelin, Juhani
name: Matt, Giorgio
name: Pearce, Mark
name: Poutanen, Juri
name: Reglero, Victor
name: Santangelo, Andrea
name: Sunyaev, Rashid A.
name: Tagliaferri, Gianpiero
name: Weisskopf, Martin
name: Aloisio, Roberto
name: Amato, Elena
name: Attiná, Primo
name: Axelsson, Magnus
name: Baldini, Luca
name: Basso, Stefano
name: Bianchi, Stefano
name: Blasi, Pasquale
name: Bregeon, Johan
name: Brez, Alessandro
name: Bucciantini, Niccoló
name: Burderi, Luciano
name: Burwitz, Vadim
name: Casella, Piergiorgio
name: Churazov, Eugene
name: Civitani, Marta
name: Covino, Stefano
name: da Silva, Rui Miguel Curado
name: Cusumano, Giancarlo
name: Dadina, Mauro
name: D'Amico, Flavio
name: De Rosa, Alessandra
name: Di Cosimo, Sergio
name: Di Persio, Giuseppe
name: Di Salvo, Tiziana
name: Dovciak, Michal
name: Elsner, Ronald
name: Eyles, Chris J.
name: Fabian, Andrew C.
name: Fabiani, Sergio
name: Feng, Hua
name: Giarrusso, Salvatore
name: Goosmann, René W.
name: Grandi, Paola
name: Grosso, Nicolas
name: Israel, Gianluca
name: Jackson, Miranda
name: Kaaret, Philip
name: Karas, Vladimir
name: Kuss, Michael
name: Lai, Dong
name: La Rosa, Giovanni
name: Larsson, Josefin
name: Larsson, Stefan
name: Latronico, Luca
name: Maggio, Antonio
name: Maia, Jorge
name: Marin, Frédéric
name: Massai, Marco Maria
name: Mineo, Teresa
name: Minuti, Massimo
name: Moretti, Elena
name: Muleri, Fabio
name: O'Dell, Stephen L.
name: Pareschi, Giovanni
name: Peres, Giovanni
name: Pesce, Melissa
name: Petrucci, Pierre-Olivier
name: Pinchera, Michele
name: Porquet, Delphine
name: Ramsey, Brian
name: Rea, Nanda
name: Reale, Fabio
name: Rodrigo, Juana Maria
name: Różańska, Agata
name: Rubini, Alda
name: Rudawy, Pawel
name: Ryde, Felix
name: Salvati, Marco
name: Júnior, Valdivino Alexandre de Santiago
name: Sazonov, Sergey
name: Sgró, Carmelo
name: Silver, Eric
name: Spandre, Gloria
name: Spiga, Daniele
name: Stella, Luigi
name: Tamagawa, Toru
name: Tamborra, Francesco
name: Tavecchio, Fabrizio
name: Dias, Teresa Teixeira
name: van Adelsberg, Matthew
name: Wu, Kinwah
name: Zane, Silvia
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2013
Subjects: subject: High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE)
subject: Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM)
subject: Solar and Stellar Astrophysics (astro-ph.SR)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: X-ray polarimetry, sometimes alone, and sometimes coupled to spectral and temporal variability measurements and to imaging, allows a wealth of physical phenomena in astrophysics to be studied. X-ray polarimetry investigates the acceleration process, for example, including those typical of magnetic reconnection in solar flares, but also emission in the strong magnetic fields of neutron stars and white dwarfs. It detects scattering in asymmetric structures such as accretion disks and columns, and in the so-called molecular torus and ionization cones. In addition, it allows fundamental physics in regimes of gravity and of magnetic field intensity not accessible to experiments on the Earth to be probed. Finally, models that describe fundamental interactions (e.g. quantum gravity and the extension of the Standard Model) can be tested. We describe in this paper the X-ray Imaging Polarimetry Explorer (XIPE), proposed in June 2012 to the first ESA call for a small mission with a launch in 2017 but not selected. XIPE is composed of two out of the three existing JET-X telescopes with two Gas Pixel Detectors (GPD) filled with a He-DME mixture at their focus and two additional GPDs filled with pressurized Ar-DME facing the sun. The Minimum Detectable Polarization is 14 % at 1 mCrab in 10E5 s (2-10 keV) and 0.6 % for an X10 class flare. The Half Energy Width, measured at PANTER X-ray test facility (MPE, Germany) with JET-X optics is 24 arcsec. XIPE takes advantage of a low-earth equatorial orbit with Malindi as down-link station and of a Mission Operation Center (MOC) at INPE (Brazil).
description: 49 pages, 14 figures, 6 tables. Paper published in Experimental Astronomy http://link.springer.com/journal/10686