Study and modelling of the new generation Cd(Zn)Te

The scientific astrophysics community needs a new instrument to gain more insight in the origin of the cosmic X-ray background, the physics of black holes and particle acceleration mechanisms in the energy range between 0.5 to 80 keV. Existing instruments like Chandra and XMM-Newton show very good results up to 10 keV but lack sufficient sensitivity above this value. In order to keep or improve the same performances up to 80 keV, grazing incidence mirrors with a large focal length of at least 20 m should be used. Since satellites this big cannot be launched with existing launchers, the mirror and detector must be placed on two different satellites flying in formation. The Simbol-X space mission will be the first project of this type.