Development of an X-ray Telescope with a Large Effective Area for the Iron K Line Band

X-ray micro-calorimeters such as the Soft X-ray Spectrometer (SXS) on board ASTRO-H will enable precise spectroscopy of iron K lines even for spatially extended objects. To exploit the full power of the high-energy resolution, X-ray telescopes with a large effective area around 6 keV are essentially important. Conventional Wolter-I X-ray telescopes aimed at X-rays below 10 keV have used the principle of total reflection to collect the X-rays. Enlarging the diameter of this type of telescopes is not effective to obtain the large effective area, since the incident angle of X-rays for the outer part of the telescope exceeds the critical angle, and the X-ray reflectivity of the outer part is significantly low. For example, the critical angle of Ir for an X-ray of 6 keV is 0.748 deg. Thus if we assume a focal length of 6 m for a Wolter-I optics using mirrors covered with Ir as a reflector, the mirrors the radial position of which are larger than 34 cm cannot reflect X-rays above 6 keV effectively. If multi-layer mirrors are applied to the outer part of the telescope, however, the X-ray reflectivity can be enhanced significantly by the principle of Bragg reflection. Our objective is to develop a Wolter-I X-ray telescope with an aperture of 110 cm and a focal length of 6 m, and make all mirrors in the telescope can reflect X-rays around 6 keV effectively by utilizing the multi-layer mirrors. The size of the telescope is determined by a boundary condition that can be launched by the epsilon rocket of ISAS/JAXA. The multi-layer is designed to enhance the reflectivity at 6.4 keV, 6.7 keV, or 6.9 keV. Our simulation suggests that the effective area averaged in the 5.7-7.7 keV band could be 2000 cm², whichis comparable to the effective area of Athena launched in 2028 by ESA. Furthermore, we showed that the Ir/C multi-layers produced by our DC magnetron sputtering machine has a surface roughness of less than 4 angstrom. This value is smaller than the average surface roughness of Pt/C multi-layers fabricated by the same machine, which is 4.6 angstrom. The small roughness also benefits the enhancement of the reflectivity.