Overview of the high-definition x-ray imager instrument on the Lynx x-ray surveyor

Abstract

Four NASA Science and Technology Definition Teams have been convened in order to develop and study four mission concepts to be evaluated by the upcoming 2020 Decadal Survey. The Lynx x-ray surveyor mission is one of these four large missions. Lynx will couple fine angular resolution (<0.5 arcsec HPD) x-ray optics with large effective area (∼2 m 2 at 1 keV), thus enabling exploration within a unique scientific parameter space. One of the primary soft x-ray imaging instruments being baselined for this mission concept is the highdefinition x-ray imager, HDXI. This instrument would use a finely pixelated silicon sensor array to achieve fine angular resolution imaging over a wide field of view (∼22 × 22 arcmin). Silicon sensors enable large-format/ small-pixel devices, radiation tolerant designs, and high quantum efficiency across the entire soft x-ray bandpass. To fully exploit the large collecting area of Lynx (∼30× Chandra), with negligible or minimal x-ray event pile-up, the HDXI will be capable of much faster frame rates than current x-ray imagers. We summarize the planned requirements, capabilities, and development status of the HDXI instrument, and associated papers in this special edition will provide further details on some specific detector options. © The Authors. Published by SPIE under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License. Distribution or reproduction of this work in whole or in part requires full attribution of the original publication, including its DOI.

Searching for Saturn’s X-rays during a rare Jupiter Magnetotail crossing using Chandra

“…The combination of the large collecting area of Lynx with a high spatial resolution (< 0.5 ) will allow us to map the fainter individual X-ray photons in greater detail. Although the spatial resolution of Athena (∼ 5 ) is insufficient to allow detailed mapping of the X-ray emissions, the spectral resolution of Athena's X-ray Integral Field Unit (X-IFU) is ∼ 2.5 eV up to energies of 7 keV (Barret et al 2016), surpassing both the High Definition X-ray Imager on board Lynx (∼ 70 eV -150 eV at energies 0.3 -5.9 keV) and ACIS (∼ 130 eV -280 eV at energies 1.49 -5.9 keV) (Falcone et al 2019). The high energy resolution of Athena will allow us to find more detailed spectra of the X-ray emissions at Saturn as well as that of the other planets.…”

Water Recovery X-Ray Rocket grating spectrometer

“…Oct-Dec 2019 • Vol. 5 (4) payloads from aquatic environments and the opening of new launch sites for science programs. Although a combination of low source flux and possible condensation on the detector during flight prevented the WRXR spectrometer from obtaining observational constraints on the Vela SNR, instrument performance was a significant development step in technology maturation and as a pathfinder for upcoming suborbital payloads.…”

“…The WRXR was a technology-driven astrophysics payload that sought to demonstrate the performance of two technologies assigned the highest priority to NASA Astrophysics technology development in the 2019 Astrophysics Biennial Technology Report: 1 x-ray reflection gratings and an x-ray hybrid CMOS detector (HCD). Both technologies were studied or are actively under development for the Lynx flagship mission concept, [2][3][4] explorer and probe mission concepts, [5][6][7][8] and smaller missions, such as suborbital rocket payloads 9,10 and cubesats. 11 The WRXR, along with the Colorado Highresolution Echelle Stellar Spectrograph, 12 also enabled the first successful demonstrations of NASA water recovery technology for astrophysics suborbital rocket payloads.…”

Lynx X-Ray Observatory: an overview

“…X-ray mirror technologies that were studied in detail by the Lynx team included silicon meta-shell optics developed by GSFC, 4 fullshell optics developed by Brera (INAF/Brera) and Marshall Spaceflight Center (MSFC), 5,6 and adjustable segmented optics developed by the SAO. 7,8 Similarly, multiple technologies were studied for the large-scale active sensor pixel array, dubbed the high-definition x-ray imager (HDXI) [9][10][11][12] and for the XGS. 13,14 The Lynx x-ray microcalorimeter (LXM) [15][16][17][18][19][20][21] is singular but has elements that have multiple candidate technologies.…”

“…HDXI detector candidate technologies are described in detail in this paper and elsewhere in the literature. [9][10][11][12] These detectors will be able to provide a low-noise, wide FOV, high-count rate capability (8000 ct s −1 ) option and will be able to support the high-angular resolution required by Lynx with ∼0.3 arc sec pixels. Key requirements for Lynx and ATHENA APS arrays compared to Chandra's ACIS-I array are summarized in Table 2.…”