State-of-the-art of the hard X-/soft γ-ray focusing telescopes: The LAUE project status

We describe the LAUE project devoted to develop a technology for building a 20 meter long focal length Laue lens for hard X-/soft gamma-ray astronomy (80-600 keV). The Laue lens is designed to be composed of bent crystals made of of Gallium Arsenide (GaAs, 220) and Germanium (Ge, 111). For the first time, the focusing property of bent crystals has been exploited for this field of applications. We show the results concerning the adhesive employed to fix the crystal tiles on the lens support, the positioning accuracy obtained and possible further improvements. The final goal is to develop a focusing optics that can improve the sensitivity of the current hard X-/soft γ-ray telescopes in the defined energy band by 2 orders of magnitude