Rationale:

Thanks to the current X-ray grating spectrometers on board XMM-Newton (RGS) and Chandra (LETG, HETG), our knowledge about cosmic plasmas and astrophysical objects has been considerably improved during the last fifteen years. A new big leap will occur with the advent of new calorimeter facilities in 2016 with the Astro-H/Hitomi's Soft X-ray Spectrometer and in the next decade with the Athena's X-ray Integral Field Unit.

This two-day workshop will concentrate on the software packages dedicated to high-resolution X-ray spectral fitting (e.g, ISIS, Sherpa, SPEX, XSPEC) and specific tools for X-ray plasma diagnostics for various physical conditions (e.g., non-equilibrium ionization, collisional ionization equilibrium, photo-ionization equilibrium, charge transfer).

This workshop is addressed to X-ray observers who wish to improve their knowledge about high-resolution spectral data analysis fitting.

This workshop will be organized as follows:

- Morning sessions: formal presentations of packages/tools

- Afternoon sessions: informal practical sessions where attenders will be able to interact with tool/software developers, practice thanks to tutorials, ask specific questions/requirements, etc.

Example spectra will be provided in the tutorials, but of course participants can bring their fully reduced spectra.

There is no registration fee.
 

This worshop will take place just after the ESAC Science workshop

"XMM-Newton: The Next Decade" (9-11 May 2016).