Yoshito Haba

Hard x-ray telescopes to be onboard ASTRO-H

The new Japanese x-ray astronomy satellite, ASTRO-H, will carry two identical hard x-ray telescopes (HXTs), which cover the energy range of 5 to 80xa0keV. The HXT mirrors employ tightly nested, conically approximated thin-foil Wolter-I optics, and the mirror surfaces are coated with Pt/C depth-graded multilayers to enhance the hard x-ray effective area by means of Bragg reflection. The HXT comprises foils 120-450xa0mm in diameter and 200xa0mm in length, with a focal length of 12xa0m. To obtain a large effective area, 213 aluminum foils 0.2xa0mm in thickness are tightly nested confocally. The requirements for HXT are a total effective area of >300u2009u2009cm2 at 30xa0keV and an angular resolution of <1.7 in half-power diameter (HPD). Fabrication of two HXTs has been completed, and the x-ray performance of each HXT was measured at a synchrotron radiation facility, SPring-8 BL20B2 in Japan. Angular resolutions (HPD) of 1.9 and 1.8 at 30xa0keV were obtained for the full telescopes of HXT-1 and HXT-2, respectively. The total effective area of the two HXTs at 30xa0keV is 349u2009u2009cm2.

Characterization of the supermirror hard-x-ray telescope for the InFOCμS balloon experiment

A hard-x-ray telescope is successfully produced for balloon observations by making use of depth-graded multilayers, or so-called supermirrors, with platinum-carbon (Pt/C) layer pairs. It consists of four quadrant units assembled in an optical configuration with a diameter of 40 cm and a focal length of 8 m. Each quadrant is made of 510 pieces of coaxially and confocally aligned supermirrors that significantly enhance the sensitivity in an energy range of 20-40 keV. The configuration of the telescope is similar to the x-ray telescope onboard Astro-E, but with a longer focal length. The reflectivity of supermirrors is of the order of 40% in the energy range concerned at a grazing angle of 0.2 deg. The effective area of a fully assembled telescope is 50 cm2 at 30 keV. The angular resolution is 2.37 arc min at half-power diameter 8.0 keV. The field of view is 12.6 arc min in the hard-x-ray region, depending somewhat on x-ray energies. We discuss these characteristics, taking into account the figure errors of reflectors and their optical alignment in the telescope assembly. This hard-x-ray telescope is unanimously afforded in the International Focusing Optics Collaboration for muCrab Sensitivity balloon experiment.

X-ray telescope onboard Astro-E. III. Guidelines to performance improvements and optimization of the ray-tracing simulator

We present a detailed study of the performance of the Astro-E x-ray telescope (XRT) onboard the Astro-E satellite. As described in preceding papers the ground-based calibrations of the Astro-E XRT revealed that its image quality and effective area are somewhat worse than that expected from the original design. Conceivable causes for such performance degradation are examined by x-ray and optical microscopic measurements at various levels, such as individual reflectors, sectors, and quadrants of the XRT and their alignments. We can attribute, based on detailed measurements, the degradation of the image quality to a slope error in the individual reflectors and the positioning error of reflectors. As for the deficit of the effective area, the shadowing of x rays within the XRT body is the dominant factor. Error budgets for the performance degradation of the Astro-E XRT are summarized. The ray-tracing simulator, which is needed to construct the response function for arbitrary off-axis angles and spatial distributions of any celestial x-ray sources, has been developed and tuned based on the results of detailed measurements. The ray-tracing simulation provides results that are consistent within 3% with the real measurement except for large off-axis angles and higher energies. We propose, based on knowledge obtained from all the measurements and simulations, several plans for future developments to improve the performance of the nested thin-foil mirrors.

X-Ray-Extreme-Ultraviolet Simultaneous Observations of NGC 5548: Fast Extreme-Ultraviolet Dip without X-Ray Variation

The bright Seyfert 1 galaxy NGC 5548 was monitored in X-rays by ASCA for 9 days and in EUV by EUVE for 12 days continuously in 1996. The periods of X-ray observations were really simultaneously covered by EUV observations. The 0.1-10 keV combined continuum of X-ray and EUV is well presented by a simple power law with a photon index Γ = 1.78 plus the Wien part of a disk blackbody with kT = 17 eV. On long timescales of days, the variability of the EUV flux is in good accordance with that of the X-rays. Furthermore, there is a clear positive correlation between Γ and the 2-10 keV flux. These results are consistent with the scenario that the X-rays are produced by inverse Compton scattering of soft photons in hot electron clouds. On the other hand, focusing on the short-term variability, we found that the EUV flux shows 20,000 s variability with 40% amplitude with neither X-ray flux nor spectral changes when the source is at its maximum flux state. This seems to conflict with the ordinary framework of the inverse Compton model. To explain such fast variability of the EUV flux accompanied by no X-ray change, we suggest that the EUV emission consists of two components; relatively stable disk emission and a variable component that is dominant at EUV flares.

A New Cluster of Galaxies Towards the Galactic Bulge, Suzaku J1759–3450

We observed an extended X-ray source designated as Suzaku J1759-3450 with the Suzaku and Chandra observations towards 1RXS J175911.0-344921, which is an unidentified X-ray source listed in the ROSAT Bright Source Catalogue. A conspicuous emission line at 6 keV was also found in the Suzaku J1759-3450 spectrum. Assuming the emission line to be K emission from He-like Fe ions, we inferred Suzaku J1759-3450 to be an extragalactic object located at z = 0.13. The radial profile of the surface brightness in the 0.5-10 keV band was explained well with an isothermal beta-model of r_c = 1.61 and beta = 0.78. The X-ray spectrum was well reproduced by an optically-thin thermal plasma with the electron temperature of kT_e = 5.3 keV attenuated by the photoelectric absorption of N_H = 2.3 x 10^21 cm^-2. The bolometric X-ray luminosity of L_X (r < r_500) = 4.3 x 10^44 erg s^-1 is consistent with that expected from the L_X-T relation of clusters of galaxies. In terms of the spatial extent, the X-ray spectrum, and the bolometric luminosity of the X-ray emitting gas, we concluded that Suzaku J1759-3450 is a new cluster of galaxies.

Ground-based X-ray calibration of the telescopes onboard Astro-E2 satellite

Astro-E2, to be launched in early 2005, will carry five X-ray Telescopes (XRT). The design of the XRT is the same as the previous original mission Astro-E, that is a conical approximation of Wolter Type-I optics, where about 170 thin-foil reflectors are nested confocally. Some modifications from Astro-E are adopted within the severe constraints due to the policy of re-build instruments. One of the major changes is the addition of pre-collimators for the stray light protection. Several modifications on the fabrication processes are also made. The replication glass mandrels are screened carefully, which is expected to reduce the figure error of replicated reflectors. We thus expect better performance than Astro-E especially in imaging capability. In order to qualify the performance of the Astro-E2 XRT, we have started ground calibration program of XRT at 30 meter X-ray beam facility of the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS). We have found positive improvements on the telescope performance from the Astro-E, which probably arise from the applied modifications. The on-axis half-power diameter (HPD) has been evaluated to be 1.6-1.7 arcmin, which is improved from the Astro-E (2.0 ~ 2.1 arcmin HPD). The on-axis effective areas of quadrants are larger than the average of Astro-E by about 5%. The on-axis effective areas of the XRT for X-ray Imaging Spectrometers (XIS) are approximately 460, 340, 260, and 190 cm2 at energies of 1.49, 4.51, 8.04, and 9.44 keV, respectively. The present paper describes the recent results of the performance of the first flight assembly of the Astro-E2 XRT.

Performance of ASTRO-H hard x-ray telescope (HXT)

The Japanese X-ray Astronomy Satellite, Hitomi (ASTRO-H) carries hard X-ray imaging system, covering the energy band from 5 keV to 80 keV. The hard X-ray imaging system consists of two hard X-ray telescopes (HXT) and the focal plane detectors (HXI). The HXT employs tightly-nested, conically-approximated thin foil Wolter-I optics. The mirror surfaces of HXT were coated with Pt/C depth-graded multilayers. We carried out ground calibrations of HXTs at the synchrotron radiation facility SPring-8/ BL20B2 Japan, and found that total effective area of two HXTs was about 350 cm2 at 30 keV, and the half power diameter of HXT was about 1.’9. After the launch of Hitomi, Hitomi observed several targets during the initial functional verification of the onboard instruments. The Hitomi software and calibration team (SCT) provided the Hitomi’s data of G21.5-0.9, a pulsar wind nebula, to the hardware team for the purpose of the instrument calibration. Through the analysis of the in-flight data, we have confirmed that the X-ray performance of HXTs in orbit was consistent with that obtained by the ground calibrations.

An X-ray calibration facility with a dynamical pencil beam for the post-Astro-E2 telescopes

We report a new calibration system for large size X-ray optics at ISAS. We adapted a dynamical pencil beam collimated from an X-ray generator, the maximum voltage for which is 50 kV. By combining two stage systems for the X-ray generator and a collimator, the pencil beam dynamically sweeps across a circular region of a telescope with the radius of 60 cm at maximum. In this case, the X-ray telescope and the focal plane detector are both statically fixed. A 4.4~m long rail for detector stage and two positions of the telescope stage provide focal lengths from 4.5 to 12 m, while the previous system can accommodate 4.5 or 4.75 m focal length. The preliminary performance of this system is summarized in this paper. For the post-Astro-EII satellite, a hard X-ray multi-layer supermirror with an unprecedented sensitivity up to 80~keV is strongly expected. This beam facility is of importance because the hard X-ray mirrors always require a long focal length of 8-12 m due to the small reflection angle (about 0.3 degree). Focal length and diameter of future telescopes are always decided by the boundary conditions of the mission at the last moment of the design freeze. Our new X-ray beam facility is designed to match with any kind of X-ray telescope parameters.

Ray-tracing simulation and in-orbit performance of the ASTRO-H hard x-ray telescope (HXT)

A ray-trace simulation code for the Hard X-ray Telescope (HXT) on board the Hitomi (ASTRO-H) satellite is being developed. The half power diameter and effective area simulated based on the code are consistent with ground measurements within 10%. The HXT observed the pulsar wind nebula G21.5-0.9 for 105 ksec. We confirmed that the encircled energy function and the half power diameter obtained from the data are consistent with the ground measurements.

The hard X-ray polarimeter X-Calibur

X-ray polarimetry promises to give qualitatively new information about high-energy astrophysical sources, such as binary black hole systems, micro-quasars, active galactic nuclei, and gamma-ray bursts. We designed, built and tested a hard X-ray polarimeter, X-Calibur, to be used in the focal plane of the In FOCμS grazing incidence hard X-ray telescope. X-Calibur combines a low-Z Compton scatterer with a CZT detector assembly to measure the polarization of 20-60keV X-rays making use of the fact that polarized photons Compton scatter preferentially perpendicular to the electric field orientation; in principal, a similar space-borne experiment could be operated in the 5-100keV regime. X-Calibur achieves a high detection efficiency of order unity.