Laboratory detection of X-ray fringes with a grazing-incidence interferometer

Webster Cash (), Ann Shipley, Steve Osterman and Marshall Joy
Additional contact information
Webster Cash: University of Colorado
Ann Shipley: University of Colorado
Steve Osterman: University of Colorado
Marshall Joy: NASA/Marshall Space Flight Center

Nature, 2000, vol. 407, issue 6801, 160-162

Abstract: Abstract Starting with Galileo's observations of the Solar System, improvements of an order of magnitude in either the sensitivity or resolution of astronomical instruments have always brought revolutionary discoveries. The X-ray band of the spectrum, where exotic objects can have extremely high surface brightness1, is ideally suited for significant improvements in imaging, but progress has been impeded by a lack of optics of sufficiently high sensitivity and quality. Here we present an X-ray interferometer design that is practical for adaptation to astronomical observatories. Our prototype interferometer, having just under one millimetre of baseline, creates fringes at 1.25 keV with an angular resolution of 100 milliarcseconds. With a larger version in orbit it will be possible to resolve X-ray sources at 10-7 arcseconds, three orders of magnitude better than the finest-resolution images ever achieved on the sky (in the radio part of the spectrum) and over one million times better than the current best X-ray images. With such resolutions, we can study the environments of pulsars, resolve and then model relativistic blast waves, image material falling into a black hole, watch the physical formation of astrophysical jets, and study the dynamos of stellar coronae.

Date: 2000
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/35025009 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:407:y:2000:i:6801:d:10.1038_35025009

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/35025009

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().