Hard X-ray focusing optics up to 80 keV for the future missions

T. Okajima, Y. Tawara, Y. Ogasaka, K. Tamura, A. Furuzawa, K. Yamashita, H. Kunieda

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

3 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

X-ray telescopes have been providing high sensitivity X-ray observations in numerous missions. For X-ray telescopes in the future, one of the key technologies is to expand the energy band beyond 10 keV. We designed depth-graded multilayer, so-called supermirrors, for a hard X-ray telescope in the energy band up to 40 keV using lightweight thin-foil optics. They were successfully flown in a balloon flight and obtained a hard X-ray image of Cyg X-1 in the 20-40 keV band. Now supermirrors are promising to realize a hard X-ray telescope. We have estimated the performance of a hard X-ray telescope using a platinum-carbon supermirror for future satellite missions, such as NeXT (Japan) and XEUS (Europe). According to calculations, they will have a significant effective area up to 80 keV, and their effective areas will be more than 280 cm 2 even at 60 keV. Limiting sensitivity will be down to 1.7 × 10 -13 erg cm -2 s -1 in the 10-80 keV band at a 100 ks observation. In this paper, we present the results of the balloon experiment with the first supermirror flown and projected effective areas of hard X-ray telescopes and action items for future missions.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)2682-2687
Number of pages6
JournalAdvances in Space Research
Volume34
Issue number12 SPEC.ISS.
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2004
Externally publishedYes

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Aerospace Engineering
  • Astronomy and Astrophysics
  • Geophysics
  • Atmospheric Science
  • Space and Planetary Science
  • General Earth and Planetary Sciences

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