Ultrawide-band instrumentation

The envisioned revolution in broadband light sources pursued in projects A.1.1, A.1.2, A.1.3, A.2.2, C.1.1 cannot take place without substantially advancing the state of the art of broadband multilayer optics all the way from the infrared to the X-ray regime. The feasibility of optical multilayers reflecting light over a spectral range of up to two octaves with the controlled dispersion¹⁾ and of XUV/X-ray multilayers reflecting radiation efficiently over bandwidths of > 10 % at selected photon energies between 100 eV and several keV has been shown theoretically, but remains to be put into practice in the future. The world-leading expertise of MAP groups in chirped multilayer coatings (LMU, MPQ)²⁾ and in designing X-ray optical systems (MPE)³⁾ along with the availability of state-of-the-art magnetron and ion-beam sputtering facilities creates ideal preconditions for tackling these challenging technological developments.

The envisioned development of sources covering spectral ranges from several electronvolts to several thousand electronvolts would be greatly facilitated by detectors suitable for spatial and spectral analysis in this entire spectral range (spanning ∼ 10 octaves!). Currently, only CCD detection technology offers this potential but needs to be tailored to this application. The cutting-edge CCD technology⁴⁾ pioneered by MAP scientists at HLL for X-ray astronomy constitutes an ideal starting point for tackling the development of a CCD device optimised for the analysis of laser-driven broadband XUV and X-ray sources. The novel broadband multilayer and detection technologies will be developed in concerted research work involving several MAP groups at LMU, MPQ and HLL.

1) V. Pervak et al., “1.5-octave chirped mirror for pulse compression down to sub-3 fs”, Appl. Phys. B (accepted for publication).

2) A. Wonisch, U. Kleineberg et al., “Aperiodic nanometer multilayer systems as optical key components for attosecond electron spectroscopy”, Thin Solid Films 464, 473 (2004);
A. Wonisch, et al., “Design, fabrication, and analysis of chirped multilayer mirrors for reflection of XUV attosecond pulses”, Applied Optics 45, 4147 (2006);
V. Pervak, A. Apolonskiy et al., “Synthesis and manufacturing mirrors for ultrafast optics”, SPIE 5963, 59631P (2005).

3) B. Aschenbach et al., “Imaging performance of the XMM-Newton X-ray telescopes”, SPIE 4012, 731 (2000).

4) L. Strüder et al., “The European photon imaging camera on XMM-Newton: the pn-CCD camera”, Astronomy and Astrophysics 365 L18 (2001).