In this thesis, we present new laboratory data of interstellar dust analogues. These measurements, were transformed to interstellar dust models and were used to fit the spectra of low-mass X-ray binaries located in the Galactic center neighborhood in order to determine the dust properties along those lines of sight. In these spectra, we focus in particular on the Si K-edge. The XAFS features in the Si K-edge offer a range of possibilities to study silicon-bearing dust, such as investigating the crystallinity, abundance and the chemical composition. We also present a study on the prospects of observing carbon, sulfur, and other lower abundance elements (namely Al, Ca, Ti and Ni) present in the interstellar medium using future X-ray instruments. We simulated data of instruments with characteristics of resolution and sensitivity of the Athena, XARM and Arcus concepts. Lastly, we explore the theory of X-ray scattering for a new parameter space where...
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In this thesis, we present new laboratory data of interstellar dust analogues. These measurements, were transformed to interstellar dust models and were used to fit the spectra of low-mass X-ray binaries located in the Galactic center neighborhood in order to determine the dust properties along those lines of sight. In these spectra, we focus in particular on the Si K-edge. The XAFS features in the Si K-edge offer a range of possibilities to study silicon-bearing dust, such as investigating the crystallinity, abundance and the chemical composition. We also present a study on the prospects of observing carbon, sulfur, and other lower abundance elements (namely Al, Ca, Ti and Ni) present in the interstellar medium using future X-ray instruments. We simulated data of instruments with characteristics of resolution and sensitivity of the Athena, XARM and Arcus concepts. Lastly, we explore the theory of X-ray scattering for a new parameter space where the small angle approach is no longer valid and where the size distribution of the dust includes large (> 1 micron) particles. We apply this theory to the environment of stellar debris disks where such conditions apply. We use as a best test case the debris disk of AU Microscopii.
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