Overview of the High-Definition X-ray Imager instrument on the Lynx x-ray surveyor

TL;DR

The paper describes the design and capabilities of the High-Definition X-ray Imager (HDXI) for the Lynx X-ray Surveyor, emphasizing its high resolution, large field of view, and fast frame rates to enable advanced soft X-ray imaging.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of the HDXI instrument's requirements, design, and development status for the Lynx mission, highlighting its innovative silicon sensor technology.

Findings

HDXI will achieve fine angular resolution over a wide field.

The instrument will have high quantum efficiency across the soft X-ray band.

HDXI will support faster frame rates to minimize event pile-up.

Abstract

Four NASA Science and Technology Definition Teams have been convened in order to develop and study four mission concepts to be evaluated by the upcoming 2020 Decadal Survey. The Lynx x-ray surveyor mission is one of these four large missions. Lynx will couple fine angular resolution (<0.5 arcsec HPD) x-ray optics with large effective area (~2 m^2 at 1 keV), thus enabling exploration within a unique scientific parameter space. One of the primary soft x-ray imaging instruments being baselined for this mission concept is the high-definition x-ray imager, HDXI. This instrument would use a finely pixelated silicon sensor array to achieve fine angular resolution imaging over a wide field of view (~22 x 22 arcmin). Silicon sensors enable large-format/small-pixel devices, radiation tolerant designs, and high quantum efficiency across the entire soft x-ray bandpass. To fully exploit the large collecting area of Lynx (~30x Chandra), with negligible or minimal x-ray event pile-up, the HDXI will be capable of much faster frame rates than current x-ray imagers. We summarize the planned requirements, capabilities, and development status of the HDXI instrument, and associated papers in this special edition will provide further details on some specific detector options.