Related papers: A Soft X-ray Polarimeter Designed for Broad-band X…
A compact and broadband polarimetric imaging platform is presented, based on second-harmonic generation (SHG) in nonlinear flat-optics. The system employs periodic all-dielectric AlGaAs gratings to induce polarization-dependent SH emission,…
Future observatories utilizing reflection grating spectrometers for extreme ultraviolet (EUV) and soft X-ray (SXR) spectroscopy require high-fidelity gratings with both blazed groove facets and custom groove layouts that are often fanned or…
The effects of strong gravity on the polarization of the Compton reflection from an X-ray illuminated accretion disc are studied. The gravitational field of a rotating black hole influences Stokes parameters of the radiation along the…
Astronomical imaging with micro-arcsecond ($\mu$as) angular resolution could enable breakthrough scientific discoveries. Previously-proposed $\mu$as X-ray imager designs have been interferometers with limited effective collecting area. Here…
This paper introduces a practical and accurate calibration method for camera spectral sensitivity using a diffraction grating. Accurate calibration of camera spectral sensitivity is crucial for various computer vision tasks, including color…
Resonant Inelastic X-ray Scattering (RIXS) in the soft x-ray range is an element-specific energy-loss spectroscopy used to probe the electronic and magnetic excitations in strongly correlated solids. In the recent years, RIXS has been…
X-ray polarimetry is now providing a new way to look at the high energy sky. The addition of two observables, polarization fraction and angle, reveals crucial new information on the structure of accretion flows and magnetic fields in…
We have studied the optical properties of gratings micro-fabricated into semiconductor wafers, which can be used for simplifying cold-atom experiments. The study entailed characterisation of diffraction efficiency as a function of coating,…
Grazing incidence mirrors for X-ray astronomy are usually designed in the parabola-hyperbola (Wolter I) configuration. This design allows for optimal images on-axis, which however degrade rapidly with the off-axis angle. Mirror surfaces…
We have built and tested a compact, low-cost, but very-high-performance astronomical polarimeter based on a continuously rotating half-wave plate and a high-speed imaging detector. The polarimeter is suitable for small telescopes up to ~1 m…
The demands on optical components to tolerate high radiation dose and manipulate hard x-ray beams that can fit the experiment requirements, are constantly increasing due to the advancements in the available x-ray sources. Here we have…
Recent advances in far-infrared detector technology have led to increases in raw sensitivity of more than an order of magnitude over previous state-of-the-art detectors. With such sensitivity, photon noise becomes the dominant noise…
The imaging sharpness of an X-ray telescope is chiefly determined by the optical quality of its focusing optics, which in turn mostly depends on the shape accuracy and the surface finishing of the grazing-incidence X-ray mirrors that…
A shearing interferometer is presented which uses polarization control to shear the wavefront and to modulate the interference pattern. The shear is generated by spatial walk-off in a birefringent crystal. By adjusting the orientation of…
The MIT X-ray Polarimetry Beamline is a facility that we developed for testing components for possible use in X-ray polarimetry. Over the past few years, we have demonstrated that the X-ray source can generate nearly 100% polarized X-rays…
Medical differential phase contrast x-ray imaging (DPCI) promises improved soft-tissue contrast at lower x-ray dose. The dose strongly depends on both the angular sensitivity and on the visibility of a grating-based Talbot-Lau…
We review the state of the art for measuring the X-ray polarization of neutron stars. We discuss how valuable precision measurements of the degree and position angle of polarization as a function of energy and, where relevant, of pulse…
The diffraction contrast modalities accessible by X-ray grating interferometers are not imaged directly but have to be inferred from sine like signal variations occurring in a series of images acquired at varying relative positions of the…
The Gamma-RAy Polarimeter Experiment (GRAPE) is a concept for an astronomical hard X-ray Compton polarimeter operating in the 50 - 500 keV energy band. The instrument has been optimized for wide-field polarization measurements of transient…
Future NASA X-ray spectroscopy missions will require high throughput, high resolution grating spectrometers. Off-plane reflection gratings are capable of meeting the performance requirements needed to realize the scientific goals of these…