Poster Abstract

P11.15 Jelle de Plaa (SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research)

Theme: Other

SPEX: High-resolution spectral modeling and fitting for X-ray astronomy

We present the SPEX software package for modeling and fitting X-ray
spectra. Our group has developed spectral models, atomic data and
code for X-ray applications since the 1970's. Since the 1990's these
are further developed in the public SPEX package. In the last decades,
X-ray spectroscopy has been revolutionized by the high-resolution
grating spectrometers aboard XMM-Newton and Chandra. Currently, new
high-resolution detectors aboard the Hitomi mission, and future missions
like XRISM, and Athena will provide another major step forward in
spectral resolution. This poses challenges for us to increase the atomic
database substantially, while keeping model calculation times
short. In this paper, we summarize our efforts to prepare the SPEX
package for the next generation of X-ray observatories.