LEXT: a lobster eye optic for Gamow
Charlotte Feldman, Paul O'Brien, Nicholas White, Wayne Baumgartner,, Nicholas Thomas, Alexander Lodge, Marshall Bautz, Erik Hinrichsen

TL;DR
The paper presents the design and optimization of the LEXT lobster eye optic for the Gamow Explorer, aiming to detect high-redshift Gamma Ray Bursts with a large field of view and effective area in the 0.2-5 keV range.
Contribution
It introduces a detailed baseline design of the LEXT lobster eye optic, including ray-trace analysis and optimization for the Gamow mission's science goals.
Findings
Optimized the field of view, effective area, and focal length of the LEXT optic.
Developed a ray-trace based design process for lobster eye optics.
Identified key MPO characteristics for improved X-ray focusing.
Abstract
The Lobster Eye X-ray Telescope (LEXT) is one of the payloads on-board the Gamow Explorer, which will be proposed to the 2021 NASA Explorer MIDEX opportunity. If approved, it will be launched in 2028, and is optimised to identify high-z Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs) and enable rapid follow-up. The LEXT is a two module, CCD focal plane, large field of view telescope utilising Micro Pore Optics (MPOs) over a bandpass of 0.2 - 5 keV. The geometry of the MPOs comprises a square packed array of microscopic pores with a square cross-section, arranged over a spherical surface with a radius of curvature of 600 mm, twice the focal length of the optic, 300 mm. Working in the photon energy range 0.2 - 5 keV, the optimum L/d ratio (length of pore L and pore width d) is 60, and is constant across the whole optic aperture. This paper details the baseline design for the LEXT optic in order to full the…
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