Efficiency measurements and simulations of a HAPG based Von Hamos spectrometer for large sources

Abstract

In this paper we report the reflection efficiency measurements of the VOXES Von Hamos (VH) spectrometer, based on HAPG mosaic crystals, together with ray tracing simulation results. Von Hamos spectrometers are widely used in several fields, ranging from fundamental physics to various practical applications. These types of Bragg spectrometers are usually used in high rate–high resolution experiments, where the typical source size can be as low as a few tens of microns. The VOXES collaboration at the INFN Laboratories of Frascati recently developed a VH spectrometer, making use of HAPG mosaic crystals and optimized X-ray beam optics, which could be used for source sizes up to a few mm in the Bragg plane and some tens of mm in the sagittal plane. Such a spectrometer may open a new era in the field of exotic (kaonic) atom precision measurements, delivering data with unprecedented precision to the nuclear physics community. In order to plan the use of this spectrometer the capabilities in terms of signal collection efficiency need to be checked, reliable ray tracing simulations have to be developed and consistency between data and simulations has to be verified. In this paper, we present this crosscheck for a ρ = 206.7 mm cylindrically bent HAPG crystal using Cu_Kα1,2 and Fe_Kα1,2 XRF lines. For both of them, the experimental results and the simulations are found to be in good agreement within the errors.