The LOFT Wide Field Monitor simulator

We present the simulator we developed for the Wide Field Monitor (WFM) aboard the Large Observatory For X-ray Timing (LOFT) mission, one of the four ESA M3 candidate missions considered for launch in the 2022-2024 timeframe. The WFM is designed to cover a large FoV in the same bandpass as the Large Area Detector (LAD, almost 50% of its accessible sky in the energy range 2-50 keV), in order to trigger follow-up observations with the LAD for the most interesting sources. Moreover, its design would allow to detect transient events with fluxes down to a few mCrab in 1-day exposure, for which good spectral and timing resolution would be also available (about 300 eV FWHM and 10 {\mu}s, respectively). In order to investigate possible WFM configurations satisfying these scientific requirements and assess the instrument performance, an end-to-end WFM simulator has been developed. We can reproduce a typical astrophysical observation, taking into account both mask and detector physical properties. We will discuss the WFM simulator architecture and the derived instrumental response.
Comment: Proceeding of SPIE, Vol. 8443, Paper No. 8443-211, 2012