Rotational aperture synthesis for x rays

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Aperture synthesis for the x-ray region can be accomplished with an array of rotation modulation collimators. A Hermitianizing recipe extracts sine and cosine components from a pair of collimators for each fringe spacing, and Fourier synthesis then reconstructs the images. The point-spread function has low sidelobes and is applicable with extended sources. A Monte Carlo simulation is used to illustrate and evaluate the statistical effects of quantum noise. Even better images may be expected from positively constrained reconstruction. The effects of axial misalignment on the point-spread function are illustrated. The conclusion is a favorable appraisal of the array as an astronomical telescope for hard x rays.