Professor George Fraser Memorial Lecture

Thursday 19^th December 2019
5:30 pm

The Transient High-Energy Sky and Early Universe Surveyor (THESEUS)

Dr. Lorenzo Amati, INAF-OAS Bologna

Venue: Physics Lecture Theatre A, University of Leicester.

All Welcome

This is the sixth in the series of George Fraser Memorial Lectures in memory of Professor George Fraser (Director of the Space Research Centre 2002-2014) who died suddenly and unexpectedly on 18th March 2014.

The Transient High-Energy Sky and Early Universe Surveyor (THESEUS) is a space mission concept currently under Phase A study by ESA as candidate M5 mission, aiming at exploiting Gamma-Ray Bursts for investigating the early Universe and at providing a substantial advancement of multi-messenger and time-domain astrophysics. Through an unprecedented combination of X-/gamma-rays monitors, an on-board IR telescope and automated fast slewing capabilities, THESEUS will be a wonderful machine for the detection, characterization and redshift measurement of any kind of GRBs and many classes of X-ray transients. In addition to the full exploitaiton of high-redshift GRBs for cosmology (population III stars, cosmic reionization, star formation rate, and metallicity evolution up to the "cosmic dawn"), THESEUS will allow the identification and study of the electromagnetic counterparts to sources of gravitational waves which will be routinely detected in the late 2020s /early 2030s by next generation facilities like aLIGO/aVirgo, LISA, KAGRA, and Einstein Telescope , as well as of most classes of transient sources, thus providing an ideal synergy with the large electromagnetic facilities of the near future like LSST, ELT, TMT, SKA, CTA, ATHENA. A key-enabling technology that will be adopted by THESEUS to achieve its very ambitious goals are lobster-eye optics, in which University of Leicester has a long-standing heritage and worldwide leadership thanks to the pioneristic and great work by Prof. Fraser and collegues.

About the Lecturer

Lorenzo Amati is a lecturer at the Osservatorio Di Astrofisica e Scienta Dello Spazio, in Bologna. He is also a research director and Member of the Board for Relativistic and Particle Astrophysics of the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF). He is well known for his reseach into high energy phenomena, and is the Lead Scientist on the THESEUS mission; a satellite proposed to ESA for launch in the early 2030s, and in which the University of Leicester are key partners.

The lecture is open to all, but we ask you to fill out the form below, to give us an idea of numbers, so we can provide light refreshments.

Maps are available on the University of Leicester pages.

If you have any queries, please contact Mrs. Daxa Patel (dp204@leicester.ac.uk).