Conical foil X-ray mirrors - Performance and projections

Abstract

The design, fabrication, and performance of conical grazing incidence mirrors designed to increase the sensitivity and resolution of observations in the iron K spectral band around 7 KeV are discussed. The present mirrors consist of two adjacent, coaxial and confocal arrays of tightly packed fixed-length cones. Heat treatment is used to minimize distortions in forming the cones. Reflector assembly is simplified by changing from rectangular reflector support slots to tapered ones. An image-blur of only 1.3 arcmin half-power radius has been achieved, in addition to X-ray reflectivity in the 1.5-10 keV range at about the 90 percent level of theoretical values.