A small satellite version of a soft x-ray polarimeter
Name
114442Y.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
1.8 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
4f13e5994c5af5d052f2b90d02ba5c02
Author(s)
Marshall, Herman L
Heine, Sarah
Garner, Alan
Gullikson, Eric
Guenther, Moritz
Leitz, Christopher
Masterson, Rebecca
Miller, Eric
Zhang, William
Boissay Malaquin, Rozenn
Date Issued
2020
Journal
Proceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering
Publisher
SPIE-Intl Soc Optical Eng
Citation
Marshall, Herman L, Heine, Sarah, Garner, Alan, Gullikson, Eric, Guenther, Moritz et al. 2020. "A small satellite version of a soft x-ray polarimeter." Proceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering, 11444.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
© 2020 SPIE We describe a new implementation of a broad-band soft X-ray polarimeter, substantially based on a previous design. This implementation, the Pioneer Soft X-ray Polarimeter (PiSoX) is a SmallSat, designed for NASA's call for Astrophysics Pioneers, small missions that could be CubeSats, balloon experiments, or SmallSats. As in REDSoX, the grating arrangement is designed optimally for the purpose of polarimetry with broad-band focussing optics by matching the dispersion of the spectrometer channels to laterally graded multilayers (LGMLs). The system can achieve polarization modulation factors over 90%. For PiSoX, the optics are lightweight Si mirrors in a one-bounce parabolic configuration. High efficiency, blazed gratings from opposite sectors are oriented to disperse to a LGML forming a channel covering the wavelength range from 35 Å to 75 Å (165 - 350 eV). Upon satellite rotation, the intensities of the dispersed spectra, after reflection and polarizing by the LGMLs, give the three Stokes parameters needed to determine a source's linear polarization fraction and orientation. The design can be extended to higher energies as LGMLs are developed further. We describe examples of the potential scientific return from instruments based on this design.
MIT Department
MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2562811
