InFOCµS: A Balloon Instrument with <10 Arc Second Hard X-ray Imaging

Details InFOCµS: A Balloon Instrument with <10 Arc Second Hard X-ray Imaging InFOCµS: A Balloon Instrument with <10 Arc Second Hard X-ray Imaging

Jan 2012

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2012aas...21944607t&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #219, #446.07

Physics

Optics

Scientific paper

The International Focusing Optics Collaboration for µCrab Sensitivity (InFOCµS) is currently funded to develop a balloon payload with a multilayer hard X-ray telescope based on slumped glass technology similar to NuSTAR, but with spatial resolution 40 times smaller PSF area than NuSTAR). The key science goal for this technology is a deep hard X-ray survey to understand role of AGN/black holes in the formation of galaxies. Due to obscuration, this can only be achieved in the hard X-ray band, where absorption is insignificant, and that only hard X-ray measurements can unambiguously determine the luminosities of individual AGN. InFOCµS will demonstrate the technology necessary to resolve the cosmic hard X-ray background and bridge the gap between NuSTAR, which can only resolve 45-65% of the background due to source confusion, and Chandra, which can detect all of the absorbed sources only at z>2. A hard X-ray survey with high spatial resolution would be a direct measurement of the luminosity function of AGN near the peak of their activity at z=0.8. We will present our approach to achieve high spatial resolution hard X-ray imaging at a cost that can be demonstrated in a balloon instrument with a resolved image of the Crab Nebula, and can be scaled to a deep-survey Explorer mission. This requires extensive refinement of the glass mirror technology at small increase in cost, higher spatial resolution focal plane detectors, and the use of techniques to achieve the extremely low background necessary for very long integration times required for a deep survey. The balloon payload will require significant improvements in pointing stability and knowledge over previous high-energy instruments to utilize the imaging capability of this telescope. InFOCµS is being prepared for a flight in the fall of 2013.

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