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  • Veronika Marsikova1,*,†,
  • Adolf Inneman1,† and
  • Peter Oberta1,2,†
  • et al.

Reviewer 1: Hsiang-Kuang Chang Reviewer 2: Anonymous

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This paper describes design and characterization of a Lobster Eye X-ray optics demonstrator for cubist applications, as its title revealed. It provides a timely report on the progress of such an effort. It is very helpful to the community and its publication is strongly recommended. However, there are several points, listed below, to clarify or revise to further improve this paper.

  1. In the referee’s version, references are not yet incorporated. Of course they should be added.
  2. Page 1, Sec 1, line 1, the word ‘optical’ in ‘an optical X-ray payload’ should be deleted to avoid confusion.
  3. Page 2, Sec 2, paragraph 6, line 2, a word ‘It’ should be added after ‘2025.’, and it would be nice to update the SMILE launch scheduled in 2025, since now it’s already Oct 2025.
  4. Page 2, the bottom line, a sketch figure to show ‘a uniform radial pattern along the perimeter of a spherical surface with radius R’ will be very much helpful for readers to understand better the design. Fig 1 in page 3 does not provide such information.
  5. Page 4, Fig 2, in the caption it would be nice to describe (identify) more explicitly all the major parts in the figure. Same for Fig 8 in page 8.
  6. Page 8, fig 9, what is the energy used for this figure? NiP has 3 different energies, as listed in Table 2.
  7. Page 9, Fig 10, the abscissa of the two right columns is always ‘x’. It’s probably a typo. And, which energy is it with NiP?
  8. Page 10, Fig 12, the curve for the direct beam (source) is barely visible.
  9. Page 10, Table 4, why is the normalized gain in 1.85-2.25 keV for the direct beam not 1?
  10. Page 11, Table 5, the energy dependence requires some explanations. It seems the best focal length is somewhat longer for 4.5 keV.
  11. In Sec 6, two types of detectors are used. It is not clear which is obtained by Rigaku CMOS camera and which is by the Quad with EGSE for the results presented in Fig 11, 12, 13, and Table 4, 5.
  12. Page 13, Fig 16, which energy is for NiP?
  13. The ‘gain’ in Sec 6.5 should be the same as that in Sec 6.2. Should not it be simply A_eff/A_det ? If not, why?
  14. The relation between ‘FoV’ determination and ‘Off-axis imaging’ should be further elaborated.
  15. If possible, all measurements uncertainties should be shown in corresponding figures.

Author Response

Please have the detailed response attached

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The paper presents a CubeSat-sized Lobster Eye X-ray optics module, analyzes its optical properties, and highlights its advantages. I recommend the manuscript for publication in Photonics after minor textual revisions in accordance with the comments below.

 

* All figures must be referenced in the text.

Section 2

* In the manuscript, the acronym MPO is used with two different meanings: Mercury Planetary Orbiter and micropore optics. The latter meaning is introduced twice in Section 2, with inconsistent writing — both “Micro-Pore Optics” and “micropore optics” are used. I recommend standardizing the term to a single form (e.g., “micropore optics”) and removing the first introduction of the acronym, as the Mercury Planetary Orbiter is not mentioned anywhere else in the paper.

* There is a wrong dot in “launch in 2025. extends".

 

Section 3

* There is no need to re-enter the achronym MFO.

* Why do the submodules have different focal lengths (as shown in Table 1)? How is this difference adjusted when the submodules work together? Why do the focal length values in Section 6 differ from those shown in Table 1?

 

Section 4

* The dimensions of the CubeSat demonstrator are indicated in 4U, however, when comparing the suggested sizes of the submodules and the detector system, it seems that the dimensions of the CubeSat demonstrator are smaller than 4U. This aspect needs to be clarified.

 

Section 6

* Please add to the text of Section 6 an explanation of which submodule (A or B) is horizontal and which is vertical.

* It is necessary to explain which row corresponds to which parameters in Fig.10.

* In the plots in Figure 11, please replace the caption of the ordinate axes with “Intensity".

* Under which target angular resolution plot was constructed at Fig. 13?

* There is a lack of conclusions on the performed measurements in subsection 6.4.

Author Response

Please have the detailed response attached

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf