The effect of mirror curvature and wedging on the angular resolution of Athena

A. S. Jegers, D. D.M. Ferreira, E. B. Knudsen, S. Massahi, S. Svendsen, N. C. Gellert, G. Sironi, D. Spiga, I. Ferreira, M. Bavdaz, K. K. Madsen

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Abstract

ESA’s Athena mission will use silicon pore optics, in which the optics assembly consists of pairs of mirror plates stacked into mirror modules. This paper presents a study of the angular resolution of Athena, using several candidate variants of mirror curvature and wedging. Results were achieved by ray-tracing these variants of Athena’s optics with the ray-tracing software SPORT.

The study shows that all polynomial variants yield a PSF below 1” on-axis, at all energies between 0.1 and 12 keV. The secondary-only polynomial variants perform best, for both on- and off-axis point sources. Of these variants, the wedging 0/2 variant is shown to generally yield superior angular resolution at higher energies, the -1/1 variant at lower energies.

A ray-tracing analysis using the Crab Nebula as an observation target was also performed. A 2D Fourier analysis was applied to the resulting focal plane responses to determine their angular resolution. This analysis indicates the angular resolution of all polynomial variants to be below 1”, at all but the highest energies. It also shows, though to a lesser extent, that the secondary-only polynomial variants perform best in most circumstances. Nevertheless, this second analysis requires further investigation for a more conclusive outcome.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of SPIE : Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2022: Ultraviolet to Gamma Ray
EditorsJan-Willem A. den Herder, Shouleh Nikzad, Kazuhiro Nakazawa
Number of pages11
PublisherSPIE - International Society for Optical Engineering
Publication date2022
Article number121814I
ISBN (Electronic)9781510653436
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2022
EventSpace Telescopes and Instrumentation 2022: Ultraviolet to Gamma Ray - Montréal, Canada
Duration: 17 Jul 202222 Jul 2022
https://spie.org/as/conferencedetails/space-telescopes-and-instrumentation-uv-to-gamma?SSO=1

Conference

ConferenceSpace Telescopes and Instrumentation 2022: Ultraviolet to Gamma Ray
Country/TerritoryCanada
CityMontréal
Period17/07/202222/07/2022
Internet address
SeriesProceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering
Volume12181
ISSN0277-786X

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