Focusing a round coherent beam by spatial filtering the horizontal source.

This paper illustrates the use of spatial filtering with a horizontal slit near the source to enlarge the horizontal coherence in an experimental station and produce a diffraction-limited round focus at an insertion device beamline for X-ray photon correlation spectroscopy experiments. Simple expressions are provided to guide the optical layout, and wave propagation simulations confirm their applicability. The two-dimensional focusing performance of Be compound refractive lenses to produce a round diffraction-limited focus at 11 keV capable of generating a high-contrast speckle pattern of an aerogel sample is demonstrated.

A ray-tracing algorithm for ab initio calculation of thermal load in undulator-based synchrotron beamlines.

The OASYS suite and its powerful integration features are used to implement a ray-tracing algorithm to accurately calculate the thermal load in any component of an undulator-based synchrotron beamline. This is achieved by sampling and converting the SRW source of a given energy into a Shadow source and using the latter code to ray trace the full beamline. The accuracy of the algorithm is proved by reconstructing the full undulator radiation distribution through an aperture and comparing the result with direct calculaton of the total power using SRW.

XTIP - the world's first beamline dedicated to the synchrotron X-ray scanning tunneling microscopy technique.

In recent years, there have been numerous efforts worldwide to develop the synchrotron X-ray scanning tunneling microscopy (SX-STM) technique. Here, the inauguration of XTIP, the world's first beamline fully dedicated to SX-STM, is reported. The XTIP beamline is located at Sector 4 of the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory.

Mutual optical intensity propagation through non-ideal mirrors.

The mutual optical intensity (MOI) model is extended to include the propagation of partially coherent radiation through non-ideal mirrors. The propagation of the MOI from the incident to the exit plane of the mirror is realised by local ray tracing. The effects of figure errors can be expressed as phase shifts obtained by either the phase projection approach or the direct path length method.

Modular soft x-ray spectrometer for applications in energy sciences and quantum materials.

Over the past decade, the advances in grating-based soft X-ray spectrometers have revolutionized the soft X-ray spectroscopies in materials research. However, these novel spectrometers are mostly dedicated designs, which cannot be easily adopted for applications with diverging demands. Here we present a versatile spectrometer design concept based on the Hettrick-Underwood optical scheme that uses modular mechanical components.

DABAM: an open-source database of X-ray mirrors metrology.

An open-source database containing metrology data for X-ray mirrors is presented. It makes available metrology data (mirror heights and slopes profiles) that can be used with simulation tools for calculating the effects of optical surface errors in the performances of an optical instrument, such as a synchrotron beamline. A typical case is the degradation of the intensity profile at the focal position in a beamline due to mirror surface errors.

Microfocusing at the PG1 beamline at FLASH.

The Kirkpatrick-Baez (KB) refocusing mirror system installed at the PG1 branch of the plane-grating monochromator beamline at the soft X-ray/XUV free-electron laser in Hamburg (FLASH) is designed to provide tight aberration-free focusing down to 4 µm × 6 µm full width at half-maximum (FWHM) on the sample. Such a focal spot size is mandatory to achieve ultimate resolution and to guarantee best performance of the vacuum-ultraviolet (VUV) off-axis parabolic double-monochromator Raman spectrometer permanently installed at the PG1 beamline as an experimental end-station. The vertical beam size on the sample of the Raman spectrometer, which operates without entrance slit, defines and limits the energy resolution of the instrument which has an unprecedented design value of 2 meV for photon energies below 70 eV and about 15 meV for higher energies up to 200 eV.

A simple optical system delivering a tunable micrometer pink beam that can compensate for heat-induced deformations.

The radiation from an undulator reflected from one or more optical elements (usually termed `pink-beam') is used in photon-hungry experiments. The optical elements serve as a high-energy cutoff and for focusing purposes. One of the issues with this configuration is maintaining the focal spot dimension as the energy of the undulator is varied, since this changes the heat load absorbed by the first optical element.

Partially coherent X-ray wavefront propagation simulations including grazing-incidence focusing optics.

X-ray beamlines in modern synchrotron radiation sources make extensive use of grazing-incidence reflective optics, in particular Kirkpatrick-Baez elliptical mirror systems. These systems can focus the incoming X-rays down to nanometer-scale spot sizes while maintaining relatively large acceptance apertures and high flux in the focused radiation spots. In low-emittance storage rings and in free-electron lasers such systems are used with partially or even nearly fully coherent X-ray beams and often target diffraction-limited resolution.

A hybrid method for X-ray optics simulation: combining geometric ray-tracing and wavefront propagation.

A new method for beamline simulation combining ray-tracing and wavefront propagation is described. The `Hybrid Method' computes diffraction effects when the beam is clipped by an aperture or mirror length and can also simulate the effect of figure errors in the optical elements when diffraction is present. The effect of different spatial frequencies of figure errors on the image is compared with SHADOW results pointing to the limitations of the latter.

High-resolution Fourier-transform infrared chemical imaging with multiple synchrotron beams.

Conventional Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) microspectroscopic systems are limited by an inevitable trade-off between spatial resolution, acquisition time, signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and sample coverage. We present an FTIR imaging approach that substantially extends current capabilities by combining multiple synchrotron beams with wide-field detection. This advance allows truly diffraction-limited high-resolution imaging over the entire mid-infrared spectrum with high chemical sensitivity and fast acquisition speed while maintaining high-quality SNR.

A soft x-ray beamline capable of canceling the performance impairment due to power absorbed on its optical elements.

We present an entrance slitless beamline design capable of maintaining its very high performance in terms of energy resolution (>10(4)) and spot size (4x4 microm2) at the sample position despite being exposed to more than 2.15 kW of undulator radiation and a maximum power density on the optics of more than 0.9 W/mm2.