GrailQuest and HERMES: Hunting for Gravitational Wave Electromagnetic Counterparts and Probing Space-Time Quantum Foam

Luciano Burderi, Tiziana Di Salvo, Alessandro Riggio, Angelo Francesco Gambino, Andrea Sanna, Fabrizio Fiore, Fabrizio Amarilli, Lorenzo Amati, Filippo Ambrosino, Giovanni Amelino-Camelia, Alessio Anitra, Marco Barbera, Michele Bechini, Pierluigi Bellutti, Roberto Bertaccin, Giuseppe Bertuccio, Riccardo Campana, Jiewei Cao, Salvatore Capozziello, Francesco Ceraudo, Tianxiang Chen, Marco Cinelli, Marco Citossi, Aurora Clerici, Andrea Colagrossi, Enrico Costa, Serena Curzel, Mariafelicia De Laurentis, Giovanni Della Casa, Massimo Della Valle, Evgeny Demenev, Melania Del Santo, Giuseppe Dilillo, Pavel Efremov, Yuri Evangelista, Marco Feroci, Chiara Ferruglio, Fabrizio Ferrandi, Mauro Fiorini, Michele Fiorito, Filippo Frontera, Fabio Fuschino, Dejan Gacnik, Gabor Galgoczi, Na Gao, Massimo Gandola, Giancarlo Ghirlanda, Andreja Gomboc, Marco Grassi, Cristiano Guidorzi, Alejandro Guzman, Rosario Iaria, Mile Karlica, Uros Kostic, Claudio Labanti, Giovanni La Rosa, Ugo Lo Cicero, Borja Lopez Fernandez, Paolo Lunghi, Piero Malcovati, Alessandro Maselli, Arianna Manca, Filippo Mele, Dorottya Milankovich, Angel Monge, Gianluca Morgante, Lara Nava, Barbara Negri, Paolo Nogara, Masanori Ohno, Daniele Ottolina, Andrea Pasquale, Andras Pal, Matteo Perri, Margherita Piccinin, Raffaele Piazzolla, Simone Pirrotta, Samuel Pliego-Caballero, Jacopo Prinetto, Giuseppe Pucacco, Simonetta Puccetti, Massimo Rapisarda, Irina Rashevskaya, Alexander Rashevsky, Jakub Ripa, Francesco Russo, Alessandro Papitto, Silvia Piranomonte, Andrea Santangelo, Francesca Scala, Giulia Sciarrone, David Selcan, Stefano Silvestrini, Giuseppe Sottile, Tomaz Rotovnik, Christoph Tenzer, Ivan Troisi, Andrea Vacchi, Enrico Virgilli, Norbert Werner, Lingjun Wang, Yupeng Xu, Gianluigi Zampa, Nicola Zampa, Silvia Zane, Giovanni Zanotti

January, 2021

Abstract

Within Quantum Gravity theories, different models for space-time quantisation predict an energy dependent speed for photons. Although the predicted discrepancies are minuscule, GRB, occurring at cosmological distances, could be used to detect this signature of space-time granularity with a new concept of modular observatory of huge overall collecting area consisting in a fleet of small satellites in low orbits, with sub-microsecond time resolution and wide energy band (keV-MeV). The enormous number of collected photons will allow to effectively search these energy dependent delays. Moreover, GrailQuest will allow to perform temporal triangulation of high signal-to-noise impulsive events with arc-second positional accuracies: an extraordinary sensitive X-ray/Gamma all-sky monitor crucial for hunting the elusive electromagnetic counterparts of GW. A pathfinder of GrailQuest is already under development through the HERMES project: a fleet of six 3U cube-sats to be launched by 2021/22.

Type

Conference paper

Publication

Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2020: Ultraviolet to Gamma Ray - Proceedings of SPIE, vol. 11444, pp. 863-881

GrailQuest and HERMES: Hunting for Gravitational Wave Electromagnetic Counterparts and Probing Space-Time Quantum Foam

Abstract

Paolo Lunghi

Assistant Professor of Aerospace Systems