Cold and Hot Slumped Glass Optics with interfacing ribs for high angular resolution x-ray telescopes

Abstract

The Slumped Glass Optics technology, developed at INAF/OAB since a few years, is becoming a competitive solution for the realization of the future X-ray telescopes with a very large collecting area, e.g. the approved Athena, with more than 2 m<SUP>2</SUP> effective area at 1 keV and with a high angular resolution (5'' HEW). The developed technique is based on modular elements, named X-ray Optical Units (XOUs), made of several layers of thin foils of glass, previously formed by direct hot slumping in cylindrical configuration and then stacked in a Wolter-I configuration, through interfacing ribs. The latest advancements in the production of thin glass substrates may allow a great simplification of this process, avoiding the preforming step via hot slumping. In fact, the strength and the flexibility of glass foils with thickness lower than 0.1 mm allow their bending up to very small radius of curvature without breaking. In this paper we provide an update of the project development, reporting on the last results achieved. In particular, we present the results obtained on several prototypes that have been assembled with different integration approaches.