Related papers: Performance Testing of a Large-Format Reflection G…
Microlensing experiments are returning increasingly detailed information about the planetary and binary systems that are being detected, far beyond what was originally expected. In several cases the lens mass and distance are measured, and…
Thanks to the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE), it is now widely recognized that fast X-ray timing can be used to probe strong gravity fields around collapsed objects and constrain the equation of state of dense matter in neutron stars.…
We report on the optical characterization of an ultra-high diffraction efficiency grating in 1st order Littrow configuration. The apparatus used was an optical cavity built from the grating under investigation and an additional high…
The Astrophysics Division of CEA Saclay has a long history in the development of CdTe based pixelated detection planes for X and gamma-ray astronomy, with time-resolved imaging and spectrometric capabilities. The last generation, named…
We study the bright Seyfert 1 galaxy Mrk~509 with the Reflection Grating Spectrometers (RGS) of XMM-Newton using the RGS multi-pointing mode of XMM-Newton for the first time in order to constrain the properties of the outflow in this…
Bragg spectroscopy is one of the best established experimental methods for high energy resolution X-ray measurements and has been widely used in several fields, going from fundamental physics to quantum mechanics tests, synchrotron…
We present three spectra of Cygnus X-1 in the low/hard state from 3-1000 keV produced with RXTE and OSSE. We demonstrate that a pure thermal Comptonization model, with Compton reflection fits the data well, with coronal temperatures of…
Quantum reflection is a universal property of atoms and molecules when scattered from surfaces in ultracold collisions. Recent experimental work has documented the quantum reflection and diffraction of He atoms, dimers, trimers and Neon…
We performed wave-optics-based numerical simulations at mid-infrared wavelengths to investigate how the presence or absence of entrance slits and optical aberrations affect the spectral resolving power $R$ of a compact,…
Light interreflections occurring in a concave object generate a color gradient which is characteristic of the object's spectral reflectance. In this paper, we use this property in order to estimate the spectral reflectance of matte,…
Fabrication of X-ray gratings has surged in the last two decades thanks to their vast employment in X-ray Phase Contrast Imaging, an imaging technique able to boost X-ray sensitivity to detect otherwise invisible details. These high aspect…
For the reliable fabrication of the current and next generation of nanostructures it is essential to be able to determine their material composition and dimensional parameters. Using the grazing incidence X-ray fluoresence technique, which…
Surface-relief gratings fabricated through nanoimprint lithography (NIL) are prone to topographic distortion induced by resist shrinkage. Characterizing the impact of this effect on blazed diffraction efficiency is particularly important…
We examine the velocity width of cool X-ray emitting material using XMM-Newton Reflection Grating Spectrometer (RGS) spectra of a sample of clusters and group of galaxies and elliptical galaxies. Improving on our previous analyses, we apply…
We analyze the diffraction characteristics of dielectric gratings that feature a high index grating layer, and devise, through rigorous numerical calculations, large bandwidth, highly efficient, high dispersion dielectric gratings in…
Scatterometry is a tested method for measuring periodic semiconductor structures. Since the sizes of modern semiconductor structures have reached the nanoscale regime, the challenge is to determine the shape of periodic nanostructures with…
Here we propose a new gamma-ray burst (GRB) mission, the Next Generation Rapid-Response GRB Observatory (NGRG). As with Swift, GRBs are initially located with a coded-mask X-ray camera. However, the NGRG has two new features: First, a…
The Visible Integral Field Replicable Unit Spectrograph (VIRUS) is an array of at least 150 copies of a simple, fiber-fed integral field spectrograph that will be deployed on the Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET) to carry out the HET Dark Energy…
We introduce a new optical component - a rotated chirped volume Bragg grating (r-CBG) - that spatially resolves the spectrum of a normally incident light beam in a compact footprint and without the need for subsequent free-space propagation…
Maximizing the grating efficiency is a key goal for the first light instrument IRIS (Infrared Imaging Spectrograph) currently being designed to sample the diffraction limit of the TMT (Thirty Meter Telescope). Volume Phase Holographic (VPH)…