Related papers: Hard X-ray Spectrographs with Resolution Beyond 10…
In astrophysics, several key questions in the hard X soft Gamma-ray range (above 100 keV) require sensitivity and angular resolution that are hardly achievable with current technologies. Therefore, a new kind of instrument able to focus…
For the past 17 years, both XMM-Newton and Chandra have brought the powerful combination of high spatial and spectral resolution to the study of black hole systems. Each of these attributes requires special consideration--- in comparison to…
Distributed Bragg reflectors (DBRs) are one of the basic photonic structures used to define microcavities for fundamental light-matter coupling studies, as well as to optimize performance of optoelectronic and photonic devices, e.g., lasers…
Hyperspectral imaging aims at providing information on both the spatial and the spectral distribution of light, with high resolution. However, state-of-the-art protocols are characterized by an intrinsic trade-off imposing to sacrifice…
The focusing performance of X-ray optics (conveniently expressed in terms of HEW, Half Energy Width) strongly depend on both mirrors deformations and photon scattering caused by the microroughness of reflecting surfaces. In particular, the…
We show that Compton scattering of soft photons with energies near 100 eV in thermally stratified black-hole accretion plasmas with temperatures in the range 100 keV - 1 MeV can give rise to an X-ray spectral hardening near 10 keV. This…
X-ray reflection generates much of the spectral complexity in the X-ray spectra of AGN. It is argued that strong relativistic blurring of the reflection spectrum should commonly be expected from objects accreting at a high Eddington rate.…
We consider the propagation of several entangled photons through an elastically scattering medium and study statistical properties of their speckle patterns. We find the spatial correlations of multiphoton speckles and their sensitivity to…
In this Chapter we review the challenges of, and opportunities for, 3D spectroscopy, and how these have lead to new and different approaches to sampling astronomical information. We describe and categorize existing instruments on 4m and 10m…
Typical astronomical spectrographs have a resolution ranging between a few hundred to 200.000. Deconvolution and correlation techniques are being employed with a significance down to 1/1000 th of a pixel. HeAr and ThAr lamps are usually…
X-ray emission spectroscopy is emerging as an important complement to x-ray absorption fine structure spectroscopy, providing a characterization of the occupied electronic density of states local to the species of interest. Here, we present…
We present a method for speckle holography that is optimised for crowded fields. Its two key features are an iterativ improvement of the instantaneous Point Spread Functions (PSFs) extracted from each speckle frame and the (optional)…
Hard X-ray spectra in solar flares provide knowledge of the electron spectrum that results from acceleration and propagation in the solar atmosphere. However, the inference of the electron spectra from solar X-ray spectra is an ill-posed…
The Arcus Probe mission concept has been submitted as an Astrophysics Probe Explorer candidate. It features two co-aligned high-resolution grating spectrometers: one for the soft x-ray band and one for the far UV. Together, these…
We derive from first principles the expression for the angular/wavelength distribution of the intensity diffracted by a blazed reflective grating, according to a scalar theory of diffraction. We considered the most common case of a groove…
The imaging problem of a specular reflector is revisited. Retaining terms through second order in the reflector surface expansion, we derive the form of the aberration-limiting aperture for arbitrary magnification assuming no bandwidth…
The diffraction patterns of crystalline materials with local order contain sharp Bragg reflections as well as highly structured diffuse scattering. The instrumental requirements, experimental parameters and data processing techniques for…
X-ray echo spectroscopy, a space-domain counterpart of neutron spin echo, is a recently proposed inelastic x-ray scattering (IXS) technique. X-ray echo spectroscopy relies on imaging IXS spectra, and does not require x-ray…
One of the problems often encountered in X-ray mirror manufacturing is setting proper manufacturing tolerances to guarantee an angular resolution - often expressed in terms of Point Spread Function (PSF) - as needed by the specific science…
The VOXES project's goal is to realize the first prototype of a high resolution and high precision X-ray spectrometer for diffused sources, using Highly Annealed Pyrolitic Graphite (HAPG) crystals combined with precision position detectors.…