Related papers: Laue and Fresnel lenses
Short wavelength Free-Electron Lasers (FELs) are the newest light sources available to scientists to probe a wide range of phenomena, with chemical, physical and biological applications, using soft and hard X-rays. These sources include the…
Successfully launched in June 2008, the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, formerly named GLAST, has been observing the high-energy gamma-ray sky with unprecedented sensitivity for more than two years, opening a new window on a wide variety…
Strong gravitational lenses provide unique laboratories for cosmological and astrophysical investigations, but they must first be discovered - a task that can be met with significant contamination by other astrophysical objects and…
A new concept for an astronomical telescope in the MeV energy band is presented. The concept builds on Bragg diffraction in crystals, which has been discussed in the past, but so far a design with good sensitivity over a wide energy range…
Some pulsars have their maximum observable energy output in the gamma-ray band, offering the possibility of using these high-energy photons as probes of the particle acceleration and interaction processes in pulsar magnetospheres. After an…
Gravitational lensing of gravitational waves provides a powerful probe of the mass density distribution in the universe. Wave optics effects, such as diffraction, make the lensing effect sensitive to the structure around the Fresnel scale,…
The high-lights of ground-based very-high-energy (VHE, $E>100$ GeV) gamma-ray astronomy are reviewed. The summary covers both Galactic and extra-galactic sources. A total of at least 70 sources are currently known. Implications for our…
Frequency-dependent gravitational lens effects are found for trajectories of electromagnetic rays passing through a distribution of plasma near a massive object. Ray propagation through plasma adds extra terms to the equations of motion…
Weak gravitational lensing of distant galaxies by foreground structures has proven to be a powerful tool to study the mass distribution in the universe. Nowadays, attention has shifted from clusters of galaxies to the statistical properties…
The detection of gravitational waves and neutrinos from astrophysical sources with gamma-ray counterparts officially started the era of Multi-Messenger Astronomy. Their transient and extreme nature implies that monitoring the VHE sky is…
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…
Plasma lensing is the refraction of low-frequency electromagnetic rays due to cold free electrons in the universe. For sources at a cosmological distance, there is observational evidence of elongated, complex plasma structures along the…
The last half-century has seen dramatic developments in gamma-ray telescopes, from their initial conception and development through to their blossoming into full maturity as a potent research tool in astronomy. Gamma-ray telescopes are…
Hard X-/soft gamma-ray astronomy is a crucial field for transient, nuclear and multimessenger astrophysics. However, the spatial localization, imaging capabilities and sensitivity of the measurements are strongly limited for the energy…
The field of weak gravitational lensing, which measures the basic properties of the Universe by studying the way that light from distant galaxies is perturbed as it travels towards us, is a very active field in astronomy. This short article…
In the context of the LAUE project devoted to build a long focal-length focusing optics for soft $\gamma$-ray astronomy (80 - 600 keV), we present the results of reflectivity measurements of bent crystals in different configurations,…
The ESA cornerstone mission The Far-Infrared and Submillimetre Sapce Telescope (FIRST) has the ideal combination of sensitivity and angular resolving power to determine the bright counts of galaxies over a large area of sky in the…
We will describe the LAUE project, supported by the Italian Space Agency, whose aim is to demonstrate the capability to build a focusing optics in the hard X-/soft gamma-ray domain (80--600 keV). To show the lens feasibility, the assembling…
We report on the feasibility study of a Laue lens for hard X-rays (>60 keV)based on mosaic crystals, for astrophysical applications. In particular we discuss the scientific motivations, its functioning principle, the procedure followed to…
Of order one in 10^3 quasars and high-redshift galaxies appears in the sky as multiple images as a result of gravitational lensing by unrelated galaxies and clusters that happen to be in the foreground. While the basic phenomenon is a…