Fabrication and performance of blazed transmission gratings for x-ray astronomy

Abstract

We have developed a new type of soft x-ray diffraction grating. This critical-angle transmission (CAT) grating combines the advantages of traditional transmission gratings (low mass, extremely relaxed alignment and flatness tolerances) with those of x-ray reflection gratings (high efficiency due to blazing in the direction of grazing-incidence reflection, increased resolution due to the use of higher diffraction orders). In addition, grating spectrometers based on CAT gratings are well-suited for co-existence with high-energy focal plane microcalorimeter detectors as planned for the Constellation-X mission, since most high-energy x rays are neither absorbed nor deflected, and arrive at the telescope focus. We describe the CAT grating principle and design, and fabrication and x-ray diffraction efficiency results for a CAT grating with 1742 lines/mm. We have observed up to 46% diffraction efficiency in a single order, and up to 55% at blaze at extreme ultraviolet wavelengths. We present our recent fabrication and soft x-ray diffraction results for 200 nm-period (5000 lines/mm) gratings.