X-ray ray tracing with Zemax for the PANTER testing facility

The PANTER X-ray test facility of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) has been testing and calibrating optics from various space missions world-wide for more than 40 years. Recently, PANTER measured the performance of the latest x-ray optic technologies of SVOM, Einstein Probe and Athena. Towards accelerating calibrations, we aim to predict the behavior of optics when introduced into vacuum. The optics are modeled with computer aided design (CAD) and ray-traced with Zemax' non-sequential mode. This allows tracing the point spread function (PSF) on the detector plane from complex X-ray optics, including Wolter-type optics, Parabolic mirror, Hybrid KirkPatrick Baez and Lobster Eye optics. We compare PANTER experiments to equivalent simulation setups, including a focal scan. We find good agreement between simulations and experiments in terms of PSF, and location of the focal plane. Zemax ray tracing appears to be a powerful and flexible tool to understand and predict calibration experiments at PANTER.