Science with hot astrophysical plasmas

Abstract

We present some recent highlights and prospects for the study of hot astrophysical plasmas. Hot plasmas can be studied primarily through their X-ray emission and absorption. Most astrophysical objects, from solar system objects to the largest scale structures of the Universe, contain hot gas. In general we can distinguish collisionally ionised gas and photoionised gas. We introduce several examples of both classes and show where the frontiers of this research in astrophysics can be found. We put this also in the context of the current and future generation of X-ray spectroscopy satellites. The data coming from these missions challenge the models that we have for the calculation of the X-ray spectra.

12 pages, 6 figures, 2nd European Conference on Plasma Diagnostics, 18-21 April 2017, Bordeaux; to appear in JINST

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Cited by in corpus (3)

• Density diagnostics of ionized outflows in active galactic nuclei: X-ray and UV absorption lines from metastable levels in Be-like to C-like ions
• R-matrix electron-impact excitation data for the C-like iso-electronic sequence
• New radiative loss curve from updates to collisional excitation in the low-density, optically thin plasmas in SPEX