Designing New Optics to Investigate Galactic Positron Generation with Dustin Swarm

The soft gamma-ray emission line at 511 keV is an important tracer for electron-positron annihilation. While astrophysical 511 keV emission was first detected in the 1960s, the origin of positron generation has remained enigmatic due to the difficulty in imaging at these photon energies. X-ray telescopes focus light using grazing-incidence optics, mirrors that gently nudge photons to a distant focal point. However, technological and material constraints have capped the effectiveness of these optics at 80 keV, and photons in the 0.1—1 MeV energy range remain underexplored. In this talk I will describe my work in designing, simulating, and testing grazing-incidence focusing optics for soft gamma rays. This could prove to be a technology pathway toward a high-sensitivity, high angular resolution imaging observatory for point sources of positron annihilation.

Sponsored by the McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences.