Expected performances of a Laue lens made with bent crystals

TL;DR

This paper simulates a Laue lens made of bent crystals for focusing high-energy X-rays and gamma-rays, analyzing how misalignments and distortions affect its optical performance and sensitivity.

Contribution

It provides a detailed simulation of a 20 m focal length Laue lens with bent crystals, assessing the impact of misalignments and distortions on its focusing capabilities.

Findings

Image distortion increases with misalignment and curvature distortion.

Effective area and sensitivity are significantly affected by crystal imperfections.

The analysis helps in estimating realistic optical performance of Laue lenses.

Abstract

In the context of the LAUE project devoted to build a Laue lens prototype for focusing celestial hard X-/soft gamma-rays, a Laue lens made of bent crystal tiles, with 20 m focal length, is simulated. The focusing energy passband is assumed to be 90--600 keV. The distortion of the image produced by the lens on the focal plane, due to effects of crystal tile misalignment and radial distortion of the crystal curvature, is investigated. The corresponding effective area of the lens, its point spread function and sensitivity are calculated and compared with those exhibited by a nominal Laue lens with no misalignment and/or distortion. Such analysis is crucial to estimate the optical properties of a real lens, in which the investigated shortcomings could be present.