SBIR/STTR Award attributes
High-accuracy metrology is vitally essential in manufacturing and optimally using ultra-high-quality free-form mirrors designed, for example, for space X-ray telescopes to manipulate X-ray light with nanometer-scale wavelengths. Due to the shorter wavelength, requirements to the surface figure (shape) and finish (roughness) of X-ray mirrors are many orders of magnitude more stringent than for visible-light optics. Metrology technology has not kept up with the advancement in fabrication technologies. The deficiencies in the metrology, rather than in the fabrication technologies, primarily limit the optical quality. We propose to develop a novel ldquo;turn-keyrdquo; technology and methodology for high precision calibration and sophisticated data processing directed to advance the Cylindrical Wavefront Interferometry. Realizing the proposed goals will open a principally new avenue for fabrication and performance characterization of large-area strongly-aspherical grazing-incidence X-ray mirrors that are critical optical elements of the high-performing space X-ray telescopes and beamline systems the modern X-ray facilities.
