Manufacturing an active X-ray mirror prototype in thin glass.

Adjustable mirrors equipped with piezo actuators are commonly used at synchrotron and free-electron laser (FEL) beamlines, in order to optimize their focusing properties and sometimes to shape the intensity distribution of the focal spot with the desired profile. Unlike them, X-ray mirrors for astronomy are much thinner in order to enable nesting and reduce the areal mass, and the application of piezo actuators acting normally to the surface appears much more difficult. There remains the possibility to correct the deformations using thin patches that exert a tangential strain on the rear side of the mirror: some research groups are already at work on this approach. The technique reported here relies on actively integrating thin glass foils with commercial piezoceramic patches, fed by voltages driven by the feedback provided by X-rays, while the tension signals are carried by electrodes on the back of the mirror, obtained by photolithography. Finally, the shape detection and the consequent voltage signal to be provided to the piezoelectric array will be determined by X-ray illumination in an intra-focal setup at the XACT facility. In this work, the manufacturing steps for obtaining a first active mirror prototype are described.

Experimental evidence of an incomplete thermalization of the energy in an x-ray microcalorimeter with a TaAu absorber.

We have conducted an experimental test at our XACT facility using an x-ray microcalorimeter with TaAu absorber and neutron transmutation doped germanium thermal sensor. The test was aimed at measuring the percentage of energy effectively thermalized after absorption of x-ray photons in superconducting tantalum. Moreover, in general, possible formation of long living quasiparticles implies that by using a superconducting absorber, a fraction of the deposited energy could not be thermalized on the useful time scale of the thermal sensor. To investigate this scenario, we exploited an absorber made of gold, where no energy trapping is expected, with a small piece of superconducting tantalum attached on top. We obtained evidence that the thermalization of photons absorbed in tantalum is delayed by energy trapping from quasiparticles. We compare the experimental results with numerical simulations and derive a value for the intrinsic lifetime of quasiparticles.