Multi-Image X-ray Interferometer Module: I. design concept and proof-of-concept experiments with fine-pitch slits

Kazunori Asakura; Kiyoshi Hayashida; Tomoki Kawabata; Yoneyama Tomokage; Hirofumi Noda; Hironori Matsumoto; Hiroshi Tsunemi; Hiroshi Nakajima; Hisamitsu Awaki; Junko S. Hiraga

arXiv · 2305.03050

Multi-Image X-ray Interferometer Module: I. design concept and proof-of-concept experiments with fine-pitch slits

Kazunori Asakura·Kiyoshi Hayashida·Tomoki Kawabata·Yoneyama Tomokage·Hirofumi Noda·Hironori Matsumoto·Hiroshi Tsunemi·Hiroshi Nakajima·Hisamitsu Awaki·Junko S. Hiraga

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Abstract

We propose a novel x-ray imaging system, Multi-Image X-ray Interferometer Module (MIXIM), with which a very high angular resolution can be achieved even with a small system size. MIXIM is composed of equally-spaced multiple slits and an x-ray detector, and its angular resolution is inversely proportional to the distance between them. Here we report our evaluation experiments of MIXIM with a newly adopted CMOS sensor with a high spatial resolution of 2.5 {\mu}m. Our previous experiments with a prototype MIXIM were limited to one-dimensional imaging, and more importantly, the achieved angular resolution was only {\sim}1", severely constrained due to the spatial resolution of the adopted sensor with a pixel size of 4.25 {\mu}m. By contrast, one-dimensional images obtained in this experiment had a higher angular resolution of 0.5" when a configured system size was only {\sim}1 m, which demonstrates that MIXIM can simultaneously realize a high angular resolution and compact size. We also successfully obtained a two-dimensional profile of an x-ray beam for the first time for MIXIM by introducing a periodic pinhole mask. The highest angular resolution achieved in our experiments is smaller than 0.1" with a mask-sensor distance of 866.5 cm, which shows the high scalability of MIXIM.

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Kazunori Asakura, Kiyoshi Hayashida, Tomoki Kawabata, Yoneyama Tomokage, Hirofumi Noda, Hironori Matsumoto, Hiroshi Tsunemi, Hiroshi Nakajima, Hisamitsu Awaki, Junko S. Hiraga. 2023-05-04. Multi-Image X-ray Interferometer Module: I. design concept and proof-of-concept experiments with fine-pitch slits. https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.03050

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