Overview of EXIST mission science and implementation
  The Energetic X-ray Imaging Survey Telescope (EXIST) is designed to i) use
the birth of stellar mass black holes, as revealed by cosmic Gamma-Ray Bursts
(GRBs), as probes of the very first stars and galaxies to exist in the
Universe. Both their extreme luminosity (~104 times larger than the most
luminous quasars) and their hard X-ray detectability over the full sky with
wide-field imaging make them ideal "back-lights" to measure cosmic structure
with X-ray, optical and near-IR (nIR) spectra over many sight lines to high
redshift. The full-sky imaging detection and rapid followup narrow-field
imaging and spectroscopy allow two additional primary science objectives: ii)
novel surveys of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) accreting as very luminous
but rare quasars, which can trace the birth and growth of the first SMBHs as
well as quiescent SMBHs (non-accreting) which reveal their presence by X-ray
flares from the tidal disruption of passing field stars; and iii) a
multiwavelength Time Domain Astrophysics (TDA) survey to measure the temporal
variability and physics of a wide range of objects, from birth to death of
stars and from the thermal to non-thermal Universe. These science objectives
are achieved with the telescopes and mission as proposed for EXIST described
here.
