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Completed TRL 4 (started at 2, targeting 4)
The primary purpose of this effort is to build on our ability to fabricate diffractive X-ray lenses to achieve high angular resolution of <0.1 arcsecond. This resolution is over an order of magnitude better than has been achieved with conventional grazing-incidence X-ray optics. Similar to EUV photon sieves, images with this resolving power have the potential to revolutionize our understanding of ultra-hot plasmas in solar flares which drive our space weather. Complimentary to EUV emission, x-rays probe much higher temperatures as well as accelerated particles. Ten years ago, we fabricated and tested an x-ray phase zone plate which provided modest efficiency (24%). We propose to improve effective area by increasing the size of the lens and the efficiency by more than 50%, this will be achieved through by building a multi-level approximation to a true Fresnel lens by stacking multiple zone plates, including design, fabrication and characterization.
Similar to EUV photon sieves, images with the proposed resolving power have the potential to revolutionize our understanding of ultra-hot plasmas in solar flares which drive our space weather. Complimentary to EUV emission, x-rays probe much higher temperatures as well as accelerated particles. The magnetic reconnection process that is believed to lead to the energy release from the coronal magnetic field that heats the plasma takes place on scales much smaller than 1 arcsec.
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