In this work we present the application of a 2D single grating wavefront sensor to align and characterize the 100 nm focus at the Coherent X-ray Imaging (CXI) endstation at the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS). The results agree well with a model of the system, indicating that the mirrors perform as designed when alignment is optimized. In addition, a comparison with the imprint technique confirms the validity of the results, which showed that wavefront-based alignment resulted in negligible astigmatism. Analysis of the retrieved focus profile indicates that intensities <1021 W=cm2 are achievable with currently available LCLS beam parameters and optimal mirror alignment.
In X-ray Free-Electron Lasers (FELs), intense and coherent pulses are generated via amplification of the undulator radiation from micro-bunched electron pulses. The initial radiation is spontaneous and intrinsically stochastic, thus causing shot-to-shot fluctuations in the intensity, pointing, and spatiotemporal profile of the X-ray beam. In this work, we use deep neural networks to investigate the fluctuations in X-ray beam profiles, thereby obtaining statistical information on the lasing process. A supervised model was built to classify X-ray images, and an unsupervised one to study the distribution of beam profiles. We have found that round-shaped profiles appear more often with increasing monochromator bandwidth, suggesting that some round-shaped images can be superpositions of higher-order modes. Our results also suggest that the X-ray beam continues to evolve past the FEL saturation length towards a round-shaped beam profile.
The ability to split femtosecond free electron laser pulses and recombine them with a precisely adjustable delay has numerous scientific applications such as X-ray Photon Correlation Spectroscopy and X-ray pump X-ray probe measurements. A wavefront-splitting based hard X-ray split-delay system is currently under development at the Linac Coherent Light Source. The design configuration uses a series of Si(220) crystal reflections in the horizontal scattering geometry. It covers an energy range between 6.5 and 13 keV, a delay range from -30 ps up to 500 ps at 8 keV. The design features two planar air bearing based linear stage delay lines for improved stability and accuracy during the delay adjustments in order to maintain spatial overlap of the two branches during a delay scan. We present the basic design concept, tolerance analysis, and estimated performance of the system.
The generation of two X-ray pulses with tunable nanosecond scale time separations has recently been demonstrated
at the Linac Coherent Light Source using an accelerator based technique. This approach offers the opportunity
to extend X-ray Photon Correlation Spectroscopy techniques to the yet unexplored regime of nanosecond
timescales by means of X-ray Speckle Visibility Spectroscopy. As the two pulses originate from two independent
Spontaneous Amplified Stimulated Emission processes, the beam properties fluctuate from pulse pair to pulse
pair, but as well between the individual pulses within a pair. However, two-pulse XSVS experiments require the
intensity of the individual pulses to be either identical in the ideal case, or with a accurately known intensity
ratio. We present the design and performances of a non-destructive intensity diagnostic based on measurement
of scattering from a transparent target using a high-speed photo-detector. Individual pulses within a pulse pair
with time delays as short as 0.7 ns can be resolved. Moreover, using small angle coherent scattering, we characterize
the averaged spatial overlap of the focused pulse pairs. The multi-shot average-speckle contrasts from
individual pulses and pulse pairs are compared.
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