Silicon pore optics development for ATHENA

Collon, Maximilien J.; Vacanti, Giuseppe; Günther, Ramses; Yanson, Alex; Barrière, Nicolas M.; Landgraf, Boris; Vervest, Mark; Chatbi, Abdelhakim; Beijersbergen, Marco W.; Bavdaz, Marcos; Wille, Eric; Haneveld, Jeroen; Koelewijn, Arenda; Leenstra, Anne; Wijnperle, Maurice; Baren, Coen van; Müller, P.; Krumrey, Michael; Burwitz, V.; Pareschi, G.; Conconi, P.; Christensen, Finn Erland

doi:10.1117/12.2188988

Cited by 23 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…The mirror substrate is made from commercially available silicon wafers. 13 The plate consists of two main functional parts: a membrane, which acts as the mirror, and ribs to interconnect multiple plates. To implement the Wolter-I type configuration of the stacked plates, an oxide wedge is grown along the ribbed direction of the SPO plate.…”

Section: Spo Mirror Platementioning

confidence: 99%

Measuring the atomic scattering factors near the iridium L-edges for the Athena silicon pore optics reflector

Awaki

Maeda

Matsumoto

et al. 2021

J. Astron. Telesc. Instrum. Syst.

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Athena, a future high-energy mission, is expected to consist of a large aperture x-ray mirror with a focal length of 12 m. The mirror surface is to be coated with iridium and a low Z overcoat. To define the effective area of the x-ray telescope, the atomic scattering factors of iridium with an energy resolution less than that (2.5 eV) of the x-ray integral field unit are needed. We measured the reflectance of the silicon pore optics mirror plate coated with iridium in the energy range of 9 to 15 keV and that near the iridium L-edges in steps of 10 and 1.5 eV, respectively, at the synchrotron beamline SPring-8. The L3, L2, and L1 edges were clearly detected around 11,215, 12,824, and 13,428 eV, respectively. The measured scattering factors were ∼3% smaller than the corresponding values reported by Henke et al., likely due to the presence of an overlayer on the iridium coating, and were consistent with those measured by Graessle et al. The angular dependence of the reflectivity measured indicates that the iridium surface was extremely smooth, with a surface roughness of 0.3 nm. © The Authors. Published by SPIE under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License. Distribution or reproduction of this work in whole or in part requires full attribution of the original publication, including its DOI.

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Section: Spo Mirror Platementioning

confidence: 99%

Measuring the atomic scattering factors near the iridium L-edges for the Athena silicon pore optics reflector

Awaki

Maeda

Matsumoto

et al. 2021

J. Astron. Telesc. Instrum. Syst.

Self Cite

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“…The wafers in SPO are etched from the back side to leave ribs to keep the correct distance to adjacent wafers. They are then pressed into a mold to give the required radius of curvature, creating a bond between sheets via a strong chemical covalent bond of hydroxyl groups [96] instead of glue. The surfaces are elastically bent and their roughness is not affected by the quality of the mandrel [95].…”

Section: 1a X-ray Optics Substratesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Optics technology for large-aperture space telescopes: from fabrication to final acceptance tests

et al. 2018

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This review paper addresses topics of fabrication, testing, alignment, and as-built performance of reflective space optics for the next generation of telescopes across the x-ray to far-infrared spectrum. The technology presented in the manuscript represents the most promising methods to enable a next level of astronomical observation capabilities for space-based telescopes as motivated by the science community. While the technology to produce the proposed telescopes does not exist in its final form, the optics industry is making steady and impressive progress toward these goals across all disciplines. We hope that through sharing these developments in context of the science objectives, further connections and improvements are enabled to push the envelope of the technology.

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“…Arcus was originally proposed as an instrument mounted on the International Space Station, 3 but is now redesigned as a NASA explorer mission (see paper 9905-218 in this volume). It will reuse silicon pore optics (SPO) designed for the ESA Athena mission 7,8 and inherits Athena's 12 m focal length. The current design calls for off-plane diffraction gratings, but in this work we show that CAT gratings are a viable alternative.…”

Section: Arcusmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ray-tracing critical-angle transmission gratings for the X-ray Surveyor and Explorer-size missions

et al. 2016

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We study a critical angle transmission (CAT) grating spectrograph that delivers a spectral resolution significantly above any X-ray spectrograph ever flown. This new technology will allow us to resolve kinematic components in absorption and emission lines of galactic and extragalactic matter down to unprecedented dispersion levels. We perform ray-trace simulations to characterize the performance of the spectrograph in the context of an X-ray Surveyor or Arcus like layout (two mission concepts currently under study). Our newly developed ray-trace code is a tool suite to simulate the performance of X-ray observatories. The simulator code is written in Python, because the use of a high-level scripting language allows modifications of the simulated instrument design in very few lines of code. This is especially important in the early phase of mission development, when the performances of different configurations are contrasted. To reduce the run-time and allow for simulations of a few million photons in a few minutes on a desktop computer, the simulator code uses tabulated input (from theoretical models or laboratory measurements of samples) for grating efficiencies and mirror reflectivities. We find that the grating facet alignment tolerances to maintain at least 90% of resolving power that the spectrometer has with perfect alignment are (i) translation parallel to the optical axis below 0.5 mm, (ii) rotation around the optical axis or the groove direction below a few arcminutes, and (iii) constancy of the grating period to 1:10 5. Translations along and rotations around the remaining axes can be significantly larger than this without impacting the performance.

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Silicon pore optics development for ATHENA

Cited by 23 publications

References 31 publications

Measuring the atomic scattering factors near the iridium L-edges for the Athena silicon pore optics reflector

Measuring the atomic scattering factors near the iridium L-edges for the Athena silicon pore optics reflector

Optics technology for large-aperture space telescopes: from fabrication to final acceptance tests

Ray-tracing critical-angle transmission gratings for the X-ray Surveyor and Explorer-size missions

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