The development of a testbed for the x-ray interferometry mission

R. den Hartog; P. Uttley; R. Willingale; H. Hoevers; J.-W. den Herder; M. Wise

doi:10.1117/12.2562831

13 December 2020 The development of a testbed for the x-ray interferometry mission

R. den Hartog, P. Uttley, R. Willingale, H. Hoevers, J.-W. den Herder, M. Wise

Proceedings Volume 11444, Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2020: Ultraviolet to Gamma Ray; 114447W (2020) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2562831
Event: SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation, 2020, Online Only

Abstract

An X-ray Interferometer (XRI) has recently been proposed as a theme for ESA's Voyage 2050 planning cycle, with the eventual goal to observe the X-ray sky with an unprecedented angular resolution better than 1 micro arcsec (5 prad) [1]. A scientifically very interesting mission is possible on the basis of a single spacecraft [2], owing to the compact 'telephoto' design proposed earlier by Willingale [3]. Between the practical demonstration of X-ray interferometry at 1 keV by Cash et al. [4] with a 1 mm baseline and 0.1 arcsec effective resolution to a mission flying an interferometer with a baseline of one or more meters, an effective collecting area of square meters and micro arcsec resolution lie many milestones. The first important steps to scale up from a laboratory experiment to a viable mission concept will have to be taken on a scalable and flexible testbed set-up. Such a testbed cannot singularly focus on the optical aspects, but should simultaneously address the thermal and mechanical stability of the interferometer. A particular challenge is the coherent X-ray source, which should provide a wavefront at the entrance of the interferometer that is transversely coherent over a distance at least equal to the baseline, and bright enough. In this paper, we will explore the build-up of a testbed in several stages, with increasing requirements on optical quality and associated thermo-mechanical control and source sophistication, with the intent to guide the technological development of X-ray interferometry from the lab to space in a sequence of achievable milestones.

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R. den Hartog, P. Uttley, R. Willingale, H. Hoevers, J.-W. den Herder, and M. Wise "The development of a testbed for the x-ray interferometry mission", Proc. SPIE 11444, Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2020: Ultraviolet to Gamma Ray, 114447W (13 December 2020); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2562831

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KEYWORDS

X-rays

Interferometry

Interferometers

X-ray technology

Thermography

Astronomy

Space operations

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