Vincenzo Cotroneo

POLARIX: a pathfinder mission of X-ray polarimetry

Since the birth of X-ray astronomy, spectral, spatial and timing observation improved dramatically, procuring a wealth of information on the majority of the classes of the celestial sources. Polarimetry, instead, remained basically unprobed. X-ray polarimetry promises to provide additional information procuring two new observable quantities, the degree and the angle of polarization. Polarization from celestial X-ray sources may derive from emission mechanisms themselves such as cyclotron, synchrotron and non-thermal bremsstrahlung, from scattering in aspheric accreting plasmas, such as disks, blobs and columns and from the presence of extreme magnetic field by means of vacuum polarization and birefringence. Matter in strong gravity fields and Quantum Gravity effects can be studied by X-ray polarimetry, too. POLARIX is a mission dedicated to X-ray polarimetry. It exploits the polarimetric response of a Gas Pixel Detector, combined with position sensitivity, that, at the focus of a telescope, results in a huge increase of sensitivity. The heart of the detector is an Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) chip with 105,600 pixels each one containing a full complete electronic chain to image the track produced by the photoelectron. Three Gas Pixel Detectors are coupled with three X-ray optics which are the heritage of JET-X mission. A filter wheel hosting calibration sources unpolarized and polarized is dedicated to each detector for periodic on-ground and in-flight calibration. POLARIX will measure time resolved X-ray polarization with an angular resolution of about 20 arcsec in a field of view of 15 × 15 arcmin and with an energy resolution of 20% at 6 keV. The Minimum Detectable Polarization is 12% for a source having a flux of 1 mCrab and 105 s of observing time. The satellite will be placed in an equatorial orbit of 505 km of altitude by a Vega launcher. The telemetry down-link station will be Malindi. The pointing of POLARIX satellite will be gyroless and it will perform a double pointing during the earth occultation of one source, so maximizing the scientific return. POLARIX data are for 75% open to the community while 25% + SVP (Science Verification Phase, 1 month of operation) is dedicated to a core program activity open to the contribution of associated scientists. The planned duration of the mission is one year plus three months of commissioning and SVP, suitable to perform most of the basic science within the reach of this instrument. A nice to have idea is to use the same existing mandrels to build two additional telescopes of iridium with carbon coating plus two more detectors. The effective area in this case would be almost doubled.

A wide field X-ray telescope for astronomical survey purposes: from theory to practice

X-ray mirrors are usually built in the Wolter I (paraboloid-hyperboloid) configuration. This design exhibits no spherical aberration on-axis but suffers from field curvature, coma and astigmatism, therefore, the angular resolution degrades rapidly with increasing off-axis angles. Different mirror designs exist in which the primary and secondary mirror profiles are expanded as a power series in order to increase the angular resolution at large off-axis positions, at the expanses of the on-axis performances. Here we present the design and global trade off study of an X-ray mirror systems based on polynomial optics in view of the Wide Field X-ray Telescope (WFXT) mission. WFXT aims at performing an extended cosmological survey in the soft X-ray band with unprecedented flux sensitivity. To achieve these goals the angular resolution required for the mission is very demanding, ~5 arcsec mean resolution across a 1° field of view. In addition an effective area of 5-9000 cm 2 at 1 keV is needed.

Design and development of the optics system for the NHXM Hard X-ray and Polarimetric Mission

The New Hard X-ray Mission (NHXM) Italian project will be operated by 2016. It is based on 4 hard X-ray optics modules, each formed by 60 evenly spaced multilayer coated Wolter I mirror shells. For the achievement of a long focal length (10 m) an extensible bench is used. The pseudo-cylindrical Wolter I monolithic substrates where the multilayer coating is applied will be produced using the Ni electroforming replica approach. For three of the four mirror modules the focal plane will host a hybrid a detector system, consisting in the combination of a Si-based low energy detector (efficient from 0.5 up to ~ 15 keV) , on top of a high energy CdTe pixellated detector (efficient from 10 keV up to ~ 80 keV); the two cameras will be surrounded by both a passive shield and an anticoincidence shield. The total on axis effective area of the three telescopes at 1 keV and at 30 kev is of 1500 cm2 and 350 cm2 respectively. The angular resolution requirement is better than 20 arcsec HEW at 30 keV, while the Field of View at 50% vignetting is 12 arcmin (diameter). The payload is finally completed with the fourth telescope module, that will have as a focal plane detector a high sensitivity imaging photoelectric polarimetric system, operating from 2 up to 35 keV. In this paper, after an overview of the mission configuration and its scientific goals, we report on the design and development of the multilayer optics of the mission, based on thin replicated Ni mirror shells.

Analytical computation of the off-axis effective area of grazing incidence X-ray mirrors

Aims. Focusing mirrors for X-ray telescopes in grazing incidence, introduced in the 70s, are characterized in terms of their p erformance by their imaging quality and effective area, which in turn determines their sensitivity. Ev en though the on-axis effective area is assumed in general to characterize the collecting power of an X-ray optic, the telescope capability of imaging extended X-ray sources is also determined by the variation in its effective area with the off-axis angle. The effective area, in general, decreases as the X-ray source moves off-axis, causing a loss of sensitivity in the peripheral regio ns of the telescope’s field of view. Methods. The complex task of designing optics for future X-ray telescopes entails detailed computations of both imaging quality and effective area on- and off-axis. Because of their apparent complexity, both aspects have been, so far, treated by using ray-tracing routines aimed at simulating the interaction of X-ray photons with the reflecting surfaces of a given focusing system. Al though this approach has been widely exploited and proven to be effective, it would also be attractive to regard the same proble m from an analytical viewpoint, to assess an optical design of an X-ray optical module with a simpler calculation than a ray-tracing r outine. This would also improve the effi ciency of optimization tasks when designing the X-ray optical modules. In this paper, we thereby focused on developing analytical solutions to compute the off-axis effective area of double-reflection X-ray mirrors. Results. We have developed useful analytical formulae for the off-axis effective area of a double-reflection mirror in the double cone approximation, requiring only an integration and the standard routines to calculate the X-ray coating reflectivity for a given incidence angle. The computation is easily applicable also to Wolter-I mirrors (such as those of NeXT, NuSTAR, HEXIT-SAT, IXO) and the approximation improves as the f-number of the mirror increases. Algebraic expressions are provided for the mirror geometric area, as a function of the off-axis angle. Finally, the results of the analytical computa tions presented here are validated by comparison with the corresponding predictions of a ray-tracing code.

POLARIX: a small mission of x-ray polarimetry

X-Ray Polarimetry can be now performed by using a Micro Pattern Gas Chamber in the focus of a telescope. It requires large area optics for most important scientific targets. But since the technique is additive a dedicated mission with a cluster of small telescopes can perform many important measurements and bridge the 40 year gap between OSO-8 data and future big telescopes such as XEUS. POLARIX has been conceived as such a pathfinder. It is a Small Satellite based on the optics of JET-X. Two telescopes are available in flight configuration and three more can be easily produced starting from the available superpolished mandrels. We show the capabilities of such a cluster of telescopes each equipped with a focal plane photoelectric polarimeter and discuss a few alternative solutions.

Global optimization of x-ray multilayer mirrors with iterated simplex method

X rays focusing telescopes, composed of several Wolter I nested mirror shells reflecting at grazing incidence, are commonly employed only in the soft x-rays band (below 10 keV). At higher energies only direct view detectors (with low or not at all imaging capabilities) have been operative so far. The use of multilayer coatings on Wolter I mirrors can be a suitable way to realize focusing optics operating at higher energies (10 - 100 keV). A procedure based on an iterated simplex numerical method has been developed in order to get a global optimization of the multilayer reflectors sequences that will be applied for this kind of hard X-ray focusing telescopes. In particular, the specific case of the multilayer optimization for the optics of some future X-ray missions has been investigated.

Simbol-X hard X-ray focusing mirrors: results obtained during the phase A study

Simbol‐X will push grazing incidence imaging up to 80 keV, providing a strong improvement both in sensitivity and angular resolution compared to all instruments that have operated so far above 10 keV. The superb hard X‐ray imaging capability will be guaranteed by a mirror module of 100 electroformed Nickel shells with a multilayer reflecting coating. Here we will describe the technogical development and solutions adopted for the fabrication of the mirror module, that must guarantee an Half Energy Width (HEW) better than 20 arcsec from 0.5 up to 30 keV and a goal of 40 arcsec at 60 keV. During the phase A, terminated at the end of 2008, we have developed three engineering models with two, two and three shells, respectively. The most critical aspects in the development of the Simbol‐X mirrors are i) the production of the 100 mandrels with very good surface quality within the timeline of the mission, ii) the replication of shells that must be very thin (a factor of 2 thinner than those of XMM‐Newton) and sti...

Multilayer coatings for x-ray mirrors: extraction of stack parameters from x-ray reflectivity scans and comparison with transmission electron microscopy results

The reflectance effectiveness of a multilayer depends strongly on the stack properties thickness, roughness, and density of each layer and can be directly tested by means of x-ray reflectivity scans at definite photon energies. The reflectivity curves are also a pow- erful tool for the in-depth, nondestructive characterization of the stack structure: The complex task of extracting the stack parameters from re- flectivity curves can be achieved via a suitable best-fitting computer code based on a global automatic optimization procedure. We present the computer-assisted layer-by-layer analysis of the characteristics of Ni/C, Pt/C, and W/Si multilayers, based on x-ray reflectivity scans performed at 8.05 and 17.45 keV. In order to verify the correctness of the code predictions, we present also a comparison of the computer model with the transmission electron microscope profiles of the same multilayer samples.

An x-ray polarimeter for hard x-ray optics

Development of multi-layer optics makes feasible the use of X-ray telescope at energy up to 60-80 keV: in this paper we discuss the extension of photoelectric polarimeter based on Micro Pattern Gas Chamber to high energy X-rays. We calculated the sensitivity with Neon and Argon based mixtures at high pressure with thick absorption gap: placing the MPGC at focus of a next generation multi-layer optics, galatic and extragalactic X-ray polarimetry can be done up till 30 keV.

Development of multilayer coatings (Ni/C-Pt/C) for hard x-ray telescopes by e-beam evaporation with ion assistance

A number of X-ray astronomical missions of near future (XEUS, Constellation-X, SIMBOL-X, HEXIT-SAT, NEXT) will make use of hard X-ray (10-100 keV) optics with broad-band multilayer coatings. To this aim we are developing a multilayer deposition technique for large substrates based on the e-beam deposition technique, improved by the implementation of an ion beam assistance device, in order to reduce the interfacial roughness and improve the reflectivity. The e-beam deposition with ion assistance keeps the film smoothness at a good level and takes the advantage of a reduction of the interlayer stresses. This approach is well suited for the manufacturing of high-reflectance multilayer mirrors for hard X-rays space telescopes where, in addition to a high quality of the deposited films, a volume production is also requested. Moreover, we are also up-grading the replication technique by nickel electroforming, already successfully used for the gold coated soft X-ray mirrors of Beppo-SAX, XMM, JET-X/SWIFT missions, to the case of multilayer coated mirrors. In this paper we will present the technique under development and the implemented deposition facility. Some preliminary, very encouraging, results achieved with the X-ray (8.05 and 17.4 keV) and topographic characterization on flat samples will be discussed.