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Completed TRL 3 (started at 1, targeting 3)
This effort focuses on the development of a novel normal-incidence X-ray mirror using multilayer reflective coating. The first step is to demonstrate the feasibility of normal-incidence X-ray imaging at E~0.5 keV. While such mirrors exist in the FUV (E<0.1-0.15 keV), so far this approach has not been used at higher energies, because the layers of the multilayer coating must be very thin and their boundaries very sharp and regular. The team is trying to use ALD to coat small polished glass samples (flat plates and off-the-shelf optical concave mirrors) with several types of multilayers using in-house and commercial ALD facilities. Measurements of the peak reflectivity and the width of the energy response are being done in-house using a monochromatic source at the varying incidence angle. Angular resolution of the coated concave mirror will be measured using in-house facilities and detectors. Additionally, a mission study that would utilize this mirror has been done at Wallops MPL.
This effort focuses on the development of an innovative normal-incidence X-ray mirror for E~0.5 keV using a multilayer coating. Such mirror would reflect in a predefined very narrow (a few eV) energy interval, effectively enabling soft X-ray imaging spectroscopy with high energy and angular resolution (perhaps ~1") on the cheap, though for only one energy bin at a time. Such a technology, perhaps hosted on a Pioneer class mission, could obtain the first-ever images of warm gaseous circumgalactic halos – a theoretically predicted reservoir of “missing baryons” in the low-redshift universe. The proposed narrow-band mirror will help separate the expected very faint redshifted signal from the galaxies and the much brighter, zero-redshift oxygen line from the Milky Way.
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