Searching for Gravitational Wave Events Counterparts in X-Rays by Tilting the Multiple Shells of Wolter-I Optics
Abstract
Current X-ray telescopes have a combination of field of view and angular resolution that makes it difficult to quickly localize the electromagnetic counterparts of gravitational wave events --- which will become increasingly important when the LIGO and Virgo experiment will work at full sensitivity or when the Einstein Telescope and the Cosmic Explorer observatories will come online in the next decades. We investigate what X-ray optical designs could provide --- in a small mission --- a field of view wide enough to observe quickly the region of the sky constrained by gravitational wave detectors, and at the same time an angular resolution sufficiently good to localize these sources. We study, using ray tracing simulations, how we can optimize a Wolter-I telescope for this purpose. We find that, by appropriately tilting the shells of a Wolter-I X-ray telescope in different directions, the field of view increases, at the cost of a reduction of the on-axis performance. We draw a possible design made of two identical modules pointing at adjacent regions of the sky.
Versions
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BibTeX
@misc{rankin2026searching,
title = {{Searching for Gravitational Wave Events Counterparts in X-Rays by Tilting the Multiple Shells of Wolter-I Optics}},
author = {John Rankin and Daniele Spiga and Paolo Conconi and Sergio Campana and Giovanni Pareschi and Stefano Basso and Marta Maria Civitani and Vincenzo Cotroneo},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.02254},
eprint = {2609.02254},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.02254},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Searching for Gravitational Wave Events Counterparts in X-Rays by Tilting the Multiple Shells of Wolter-I Optics
AU - John Rankin
AU - Daniele Spiga
AU - Paolo Conconi
AU - Sergio Campana
AU - Giovanni Pareschi
AU - Stefano Basso
AU - Marta Maria Civitani
AU - Vincenzo Cotroneo
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/02
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.02254
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.02254
AB - Current X-ray telescopes have a combination of field of view and angular resolution that makes it difficult to quickly localize the electromagnetic counterparts of gravitational wave events --- which will become increasingly important when the LIGO and Virgo experiment will work at full sensitivity or when the Einstein Telescope and the Cosmic Explorer observatories will come online in the next decades. We investigate what X-ray optical designs could provide --- in a small mission --- a field of view wide enough to observe quickly the region of the sky constrained by gravitational wave detectors, and at the same time an angular resolution sufficiently good to localize these sources. We study, using ray tracing simulations, how we can optimize a Wolter-I telescope for this purpose. We find that, by appropriately tilting the shells of a Wolter-I X-ray telescope in different directions, the field of view increases, at the cost of a reduction of the on-axis performance. We draw a possible design made of two identical modules pointing at adjacent regions of the sky.
ER -