Laue lenses for hard x-/soft γ-rays: new prototype results

Virgilli, Enrico; Frontera, F.; Valsan, Vineeth; Liccardo, Vincenzo; Carassiti, V.; Evangelisti, F.; Squerzanti, S.

doi:10.1117/12.895233

Cited by 11 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…From the already gained experience on Laue lenses (see, e.g., [5,6]), we have started a new project, LAUE, supported by the Italian Space Agency (ASI), devoted to the development of an advanced lens assembling technology that we expect it eventually will allow to accurately build Laue lenses for space astrophysics. The expected accuracy in the lens assembling would allow to build lenses even with very long focal lengths (up to 100 m), a goal never achieved so far.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Development status of the LAUE project

et al. 2012

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We present the status of LAUE, a project supported by the Italian Space Agency (ASI), and devoted to develop Laue lenses with long focal length (from 10–15 meters up to 100 meters), for hard X–/soft gamma–ray astronomy (80-600 keV). Thanks to their focusing capability, the design goal is to improve the sensitivity of the current instrumention in the above energy band by 2 orders of magnitude, down to a few times 10−8 photons/(cm2 s keV). © (2012) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Development status of the LAUE project

et al. 2012

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“…Thus the highest energies are diffracted from the nearest crystals and the lowest energies from the furthest crystals to the lens axis. At the University of Ferrara, with the project HAXTEL (Hard X-ray TELescope) we developed a technology for assembling Laue lenses with moderate focal length (< 10 m), using flat mosaic crystal tiles of Copper Cu(111) [32,78]. The disadvantage of flat crystals is that the minimum focal spot size is that of the crystal tiles.…”

Section: Laue Lensmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding the origin of the positron annihilation line and the physics of supernova explosions

et al. 2021

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Nuclear astrophysics, and particularly nuclear emission line diagnostics from a variety of cosmic sites, has remained one of the least developed fields in experimental astronomy, despite its central role in addressing a number of outstanding questions in modern astrophysics. Radioactive isotopes are co-produced with stable isotopes in the fusion reactions of nucleosynthesis in supernova explosions and other violent events, such as neutron star mergers. The origin of the 511 keV positron annihilation line observed in the direction of the Galactic Center is a 50-year-long mystery. In fact, we still do not understand whether its diffuse large-scale emission is entirely due to a population of discrete sources, which are unresolved with current poor angular resolution instruments at these energies, or whether dark matter annihilation could contribute to it. From the results obtained in the pioneering decades of this experimentally-challenging window, it has become clear that some of the most pressing issues in high-energy astrophysics and astro-particle physics would greatly benefit from significant progress in the observational capabilities in the keV-to-MeV energy band. Current instrumentation is in fact not sensitive enough to detect radioactive and annihilation lines from a wide variety of phenomena in our and nearby galaxies, let alone study the spatial distribution of their emission. In this White Paper (WP), we discuss how unprecedented studies in this field will become possible with a new low-energy gamma-ray space experiment, called ASTENA (Advanced Surveyor of Transient Events and Nuclear Astrophysics), which combines new imaging, spectroscopic and polarization capabilities. In a separate WP (Guidorzi et al. 39), we discuss how the same mission concept will enable new groundbreaking studies of the physics of Gamma–Ray Bursts and other high-energy transient phenomena over the next decades.

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“…It is the follow-up of an initial development project (HAXTEL) in which the adopted lens-assembling technique was found to be suitable only for lenses with short focal-length (<10 m). 17,18 The crystals used (flat tiles of 15 × 15 mm 2 cross section) were made of Cu (111) in mosaic configuration provided by the Institute Laue Langevin (ILL) in Grenoble, France. The lens-assembling required several steps with a resulting cumulative error budget of a few arcmin, that was not acceptable for a space Laue lens with a long focal length (at least about 20 m).…”

Section: Goals and Motivationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Scientific prospects in soft gamma-ray astronomy enabled by the LAUE project

et al. 2013

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This paper summarizes the development of a successful project, LAUE, supported by the Italian Space Agency (ASI) and devoted to the development of long focal length (up to 100 m) Laue lenses for hard X-/soft gamma-ray astronomy (80-600 keV). The apparatus is ready and the assembling of a prototype lens petal is ongoing. The great achievement of this project is the use of bent crystals. From measurements obtained on single crystals and from simulations, we have estimated the expected Point Spread Function and thus the sensitivity of a lens made of petals. The expected sensitivity is a few ×10 −8 photons cm −2 s −1 keV −1 . We discuss a number of open astrophysical questions that can settled with such an instrument aboard a free-flying satellite.A significant part of the NuSTAR core program time will be devoted to sensitive studies of extragalactic and Galactic surveys, which will supplement the extended surveys beyond 20 keV already performed 7, 8 or planned to be continued with the ESA INTEGRAL observatory, 9 and with the NASA Swift satellite. 10Evidence of extended matter-antimatter annihilation emission (at 511 keV) from the Galactic Center 11 and of Galactic nucleosynthesis processes 11, 12 has been found. Furthermore, polarization of high energy photons (> 400 keV) emitted from a strong source like the Cygnus X-1 has been clearly measured. 13However, in order to take full advantage of these results, a new generation of focusing telescopes which extend the energy band up to several hundreds of keV is needed. In spite of its high sensitivity, NuSTAR optics are based on multilayer reflectivity and therefore are limited in the energy passband. A two-order of magnitude

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Laue lenses for hard x-/soft γ-rays: new prototype results

Cited by 11 publications

References 6 publications

Development status of the LAUE project

Development status of the LAUE project

Understanding the origin of the positron annihilation line and the physics of supernova explosions

Scientific prospects in soft gamma-ray astronomy enabled by the LAUE project

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