Lynx soft x-ray critical-angle transmission grating spectrometer

Abstract

Lynx is one of four Surveyor-class mission concept studies for the 2020 Astrophysics Decadal Survey. It features an x-ray telescope with an unprecedented collecting area of 2 m2 at 1 keV and a point-spread function of 0.5 arc sec. We describe the status of critical-angle transmission (CAT) grating technology development and perform ray-traces for a CAT grating x-ray spectrometer that can reach high spectral resolving power λ / Δλ > 5000 (often exceeding 7500) and effective area around 4000 cm2 in the soft x-ray band (0.2 to 2 keV). To achieve these characteristics, about two-thirds of the aperture must be covered with gratings. CAT gratings are mostly transparent at high energies, and thus hard x-rays can still be used for simultaneous imaging spectroscopy using a microcalorimeter array. We simulate several design scenarios and investigate how subaperturing can be most effectively used to increase performance. For large gratings, the resolving power is limited by the deviation of flat gratings from the ideal Rowland torus surface. Chirped gratings, i.e., gratings where the spacing of grating bars is variable, can overcome this limitation. Alignment tolerances in many degrees of freedom can be achieved with machining tolerances. We outline the development path to CAT grating performance improvements and discuss future ray-trace work to refine the design of the spectrometer.