ROSCOSMOS / DLR - Spectrum-RG (Spectr-RG) Mission patch.
April 1, 2021
The Russian Science Foundation has summed up the results of three competitions to support fundamental and exploratory research. In the competition of individual scientific groups, the winner was the project “Search and study of distant quasars in an X-ray survey of the entire sky using the eROSITA telescope of the Russian orbital observatory“ Spektr-RG ”under the leadership of Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences Marat Ravilievich Gilfanov.
“The first few billion years of the life of the Universe were filled with events - galaxies were actively forming, in the cores of which supermassive black holes grew rapidly. The growth of supermassive black holes occurred mainly due to the accretion (falling onto a black hole) of interstellar gas and was accompanied by the release of a huge amount of energy in the form of electromagnetic radiation, says Marat Gilfanov. “Thanks to their colossal luminosity, such objects - quasars, located at huge, cosmological, distances from us, we can observe even today”.
The goal of the project, supported by the Russian Science Foundation, is to study the growth of supermassive black holes in galactic nuclei in the young Universe. The objects of study are distant quasars located at redshifts from z = 3 to at least z = 6. This redshift interval corresponds to the second billion years in the life of the universe. Quasars will be selected from the number of X-ray sources discovered by the eROSITA telescope on board the Russian orbital observatory Spektr-RG during the all-sky survey.
The Spektr-RG orbital X-ray observatory was launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome on July 13, 2019 and began scanning the entire sky in December 2019. To date, the third out of eight planned sky surveys is under way. Following the results of the first year of the survey, the eROSITA telescope achieved a record sensitivity, an order of magnitude higher than the sensitivity of the previous most complete survey of the entire sky by the ROSAT observatory (Germany).
Thanks to this, already now, with the help of the eROSITA telescope, about two million X-ray sources have been discovered - ~ 20 times more than was registered by the ROSAT observatory. About three quarters of these sources are active galactic nuclei and quasars. The search and selection of distant quasars for research within the framework of the project will be carried out using the SRGz machine learning system, developed by the project participants in the High Energy Astrophysics Department of the IKI RAS. As a result, a sample of several thousand high luminosity quasars at z> 3 will be obtained, which is tens of times larger in number than all existing samples of distant quasars selected by their X-ray emission.
“Based on this most complete sample to date, we will investigate the physical and statistical properties of actively growing supermassive black holes in the young Universe, including their luminosity function, spectral distribution of emitted energy, variability of X-ray radiation. These results will significantly 'advance' our understanding of the general picture of the growth of supermassive black holes in the young Universe and the physics of matter accretion on them. "
Spektr-RG (Spectrum-RG) orbital X-ray observatory
Within the framework of the 2021 competition for grants in the priority area of activity of the Russian Science Foundation "Conducting fundamental scientific research and exploratory research by individual scientific groups", 526 projects were supported. They are planned for implementation in 2021–2023 with a possible extension of the implementation period by one or two years. The size of one grant is up to 6 million rubles annually.
In 2020, the implementation of three-year projects of individual research groups, supported by the Russian Science Foundation in 2018, was also completed. The terms of the competition provided for the extension of the implementation of projects for a period of one to two years. As part of the 2021 competition for the extension, 218 projects were supported. Among them are two projects led by the staff of the IKI RAS:
- Magnetic-plasma radiation processes on neutron stars and in the vicinity of black holes (supervisor - Dr. G.S. Bisnovaty-Kogan).
- A promising device "Space gamma spectrometer with labeled charged particles" (KGS-MZCh) for studying the Moon, Mars and other celestial bodies of the solar system by methods of nuclear physics (supervisor - Dr. IG Mitrofanov).
IKI RAN: http://press.cosmos.ru/srgerosita-raskroet-tayny-dalekih-kvazarov-v-molodoy-vselennoy
ROSCOSMOS Press Release: https://www.roscosmos.ru/30563/
Spektr-RG orbital X-ray observatory: https://www.roscosmos.ru/srg/
Images, Text, Credits: ROSCOSMOS/Orbiter.ch Aerospace/Roland Berga.
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