Software to model the performance of x-ray telescopes

A modular user-friendly computer program for the modeling of grazing-incidence type x-ray optical systems has been developed. This comprehensive computer software GRAZTRACE covers the manipulation of input data, ray tracing with reflectivity, and surface deformation effects, convolution with x-ray source shape and x-ray scattering. The program also includes the capabilities for image analysis, detector scan modeling, and graphical presentation of the results. The utilities have been developed to interface the predicted mirror structural and thermal distortions with the ray-trace. There is no commercially available (or published) program tailored for the analysis of grazing-incidence type optical systems. The GRAZTRACE program has the analysis and graphics capabilities similar to those of the standard design and analysis programs (CODE V and SYNOPSYS) for normal-incidence optical systems. This software is written in FORTRAN 77 and runs on a SUN/SPARC station. An interactive command mode version and a batch mode version of the software have been developed. The application of GRAZTRACE for the image modeling of AXAF-I (Advanced X-ray Astrophysics Facility-Imaging) telescope is also discussed.