Upgrade of the 30-m x-ray pencil beam line at the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science

Abstract

The 30-m x-ray pencil beam line at the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science has been upgraded. The vacuum chamber has been replaced by a new cylindrical chamber of diameter 1.8μm and length 11.3μm. Stages on which a telescope and detectors had been mounted were also replaced. At the same time, a new charge-coupled device consisting of 12401152 pixels of size 22.522.5 μm^2 was introduced. The detector stage can be moved along the x-ray beam in the vacuum chamber, which enables us to vary the distance between the sample and the detectors from 0.7 to 9μm. The two stages can be moved in a square region 500500 mm^2 in the plane normal to the x-ray beam. The pitching of moving axes of Y direction (horizontal and normal to the beam) of the sample and the detector stages is somewhat large, but does not exceed 60 arc sec. The pitching of the other axes and the yawing of all the axes are less than 30 arc sec. As for rolling, we could obtain only the upper limits because of the difficulty in measuring them. The upper limit of the Z direction (vertical and normal to the beam) of the detector stage moving axis is somewhat large and is about 60 arc sec, and those of the other axes are less than 30 arc sec. A summary of the beam line performance is presented. Soon after the upgrade, the ASTRO-H Soft X-ray telescopes were calibrated in this beam line.