Affiliations: Metastable Materials Manufacturing Lab, Physics
Department, University at Albany - State University of New York, 90 Fuller Rd.,
Colonie, NY 12205, USA
Note: [] Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 518 442 7761; Fax: +1 518 442
7762; E-mail: [email protected]. Current address: Thin Films Division, GE
Global Research Center, One Research Circle, Niskayuna, NY 12309, USA
Abstract: Many different performance measures are used to characterize x-ray
optics, sometimes resulting in radically different rankings. This makes it
difficult, even for practitioners intimately involved in the field, to compare
results from different optics and for different applications. To truly
understand and appreciate advances in a specific type of optic –
polycapillary optics – different methods of optic comparison are
evaluated and their relevance explained. These methods include transmission
efficiency, flux, flux density, equivalent distance, normalized gain, insertion
gain, and effective capture angle. Polycapillary focusing optics with varying
input and output parameters are compared using these different performance
standards.
Keywords: polycapillary optics, transmission efficiency, equivalent distance, normalized gain, insertion gain, effective capture angle
