An expanded X-ray beam facility (BEaTriX) to test the modular elements of the ATHENA optics

TL;DR

The paper presents the design and simulation of BEaTriX, a specialized X-ray testing facility for evaluating modular optical elements of the ATHENA space observatory, aiming to improve quality control and assembly accuracy.

Contribution

It introduces a novel X-ray beam facility design capable of directly testing large optical units for ATHENA, enhancing quality assessment methods.

Findings

Design of a broad, collimated X-ray beam using grazing incidence mirrors and crystals

Simulation results showing the system can produce uniform X-ray illumination

Potential for routine quality testing of optical units in the 1-5 keV energy range

Abstract

Future large X-ray observatories like ATHENA will be equipped with very large optics, obtained by assembling modular optical elements, named X-ray Optical Units (XOU) based on the technology of either Silicon Pore Optics or Slumped Glass Optics. In both cases, the final quality of the modular optic (a 5 arcsec HEW requirement for ATHENA) is determined by the accuracy alignment of the XOUs within the assembly, but also by the angular resolution of the individual XOU. This is affected by the mirror shape accuracy, its surface roughness, and the mutual alignment of the mirrors within the XOU itself. Because of the large number of XOUs to be produced, quality tests need to be routinely done to select the most performing stacked blocks, to be integrated into the final optic. In addition to the usual metrology based on profile and roughness measurements, a direct measurement with a broad, parallel, collimated and uniform X- ray beam would be the most reliable test, without the need of a focal spot reconstruction as usually done in synchrotron light. To this end, we designed the BEaTriX (Beam Expander Testing X-ray facility) to be realized at INAF-OAB, devoted to the functional tests of the XOUs. A grazing incidence parabolic mirror and an asymmetrically cut crystal will produce a parallel X-ray beam broad enough to illuminate the entire aperture of the focusing elements. An X-ray camera at the focal distance from the mirrors will directly record the image. The selection of different crystals will enable to test the XOUs in the 1 - 5 keV range, included in the X-ray energy band of ATHENA (0.2-12 keV). In this paper we discuss a possible BEaTriX facility implementation. We also show a preliminary performance simulation of the optical system.