Instituto de Física de Cantabria, Santander
Madrid, 20 de octubre de 2009
Energetic phenomena have been shown by past and current high-energy observational facilities not to be rare events, but to develop in almost every single location in the Universe. Accreting black holes in galaxy centres, hot gas trapped in the potential wells of galaxies and clusters, exploding stars polluting the interstellar medium and releasing high energy photons and particles apear to be among the most common phenomena in the Universe. The limitations of the current space-borne X-ray and gamma-ray observatories as well as the pioneering Cerenkov ground-based gamma-ray experiments will need to be overcome for the next generation of high-energy observatories, able to reveal and study these and other ubiquitous energetic phenomena. Challenges like light-weight X-ray focussing optics, deployable optical benches, cryogenic imaging spectrometers capable of delivering spatially resolved X-ray spectroscopy, polarimeters, Laue lenses and Compton gamma-ray telescopes and decreasing the energy threshold in Cerenkov telescope arrays appear to be amongst the most demanding for the future. In this talk I will motivate the use and discuss the current status of some of these critical technologies, which need to be nailed down to bring projects like IXO, GRI and CTA to reality.
