Ground calibration result of the wide-field X-ray telescope (WXT) onboard the Einstein probe

We report on results of the on-ground X-ray calibration of the Wide-field X-ray Telescope (WXT), built from novel lobster-eye micro-pore optics, on board the Einstein Probe (EP) satellite. To fully characterize the performance and properties of the WXT instrument, a series of tests and calibrations were conducted at different levels of devices, assemblies and the complete module before the launch of EP. In this paper, we present the calibration results of three flight model modules (FM1, FM5 and FM11) obtained during their end-to-end module calibration experiments carried out at the 100-m X-ray Test Facility (100XF) of the Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). Measurements of the Point Spread Function (PSF), effective area, and energy response were performed for multiple incident directions and several characteristic X-ray emission line energies. Specifically, the distributions of the PSF and effective areas are found to be roughly uniform across the FoV, in large agreement with the prediction of lobster-eye optics. Their energy-dependent behavior aligns well with theoretical predictions and Monte Carlo simulations. At $$\sim 1.25$$ keV, the full width at half maximum (FWHM) of the focal spot ranges from $$3-7$$ arcmin (with a median of $$\sim 4.2$$ arcmin) and the effective area is in range of $$\sim 2-3~\mathrm{cm^2}$$ . Noticeably, the flight model instruments demonstrate a $$\sim 1.5$$ arcmin improvement in spatial resolution over the previously launched Lobster Eye Imager for Astronomy. The properties of the complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) sensors were also calibrated. The gain coefficients are in range of $$6.4-6.9~\mathrm{eV/DN}$$ . The energy resolutions are in range of $$\sim 120$$ to 140 eV at 1.25 keV, meeting design requirements. These calibration results have been ingested into the first version of calibration database (CALDB) and applied to the analysis of the scientific data acquired by WXT after the launch of EP.