Mirrors for X-ray telescopes: Fresnel diffraction-based computation of point spread functions from metrology

Context. The imaging sharpness of an X-ray telescope is chiefly determined by the optical quality of its focusing optics, which in turn mostly depends on the shape accuracy and the surface finishing of the grazing-incidence X-ray mirrors that compose the optical modules. To ensure the imaging performance during the mirror manufacturing, a fundamental step is predicting the mirror point spread function (PSF) from the metrology of its surface. Traditionally, the PSF computation in X-rays is assumed to be different depending on whether the surface defects are classified as figure errors or roughness. This classical approach, however, requires setting a boundary between these two asymptotic regimes, which is not known a priori.