This PDF file contains the front matter associated with SPIE Proceedings Volume 9210 including the Title Page, Copyright information, Table of Contents, Introduction, and Conference Committee listing.

The European XFEL in Hamburg will be comprised of a linear accelerator and three Free-Electron-Laser beamlines (SASE1, SASE2 and SASE3) covering the energy range from 250 eV to 24 keV. It will provide up to 2700 pulses in trains of 600 microsecond duration at a repetition rate of 10 Hz. SASE3 beamline is the soft X-ray beamline (0.25 - 3 keV) and delivers photon pulses to SQS (Small Quantum System) and SCS (Spectroscopy & Coherent Scattering) experiments. The beamline is able to operate in both monochromatic and non-monochromatic mode. The latter provides the inherent FEL bandwidth at higher intensities. The beamline from photon source to experimental station is about 450 m long. The length of the beamline is related to the optics single-shotdamage issue. The almost diffraction-limited beam is propagated along the beamline with very long (up to 800 mm clear aperture), cooled (with eutectic bath) and super-polished (50 nrad RMS slope error and less than 3 nm PV residual height error) mirrors. The VLS-PG (variable line spacing - plane grating) monochromator covers the entire beamline energy range and its optical design is guided by the optimization of the energy resolving power, the minimization of the pulse broadening and the maximization of optics damage tolerance. Grating substrates are 530 mm long, eutectic cooled and present outstanding surface quality. The VLS parameters of the blazed profile are also a real challenge under manufacturing and measuring point of view. Adaptive optics in the horizontal (the second offset mirror) and vertical (monochromator premirror) plane are foreseen in the optical layout to increase the beamline tunability and to preserve the highly coherent beam properties. Beamline optical design, expected performance and also mechanical aspects of main beamline components are reported.

The FERMI FEL facility has begun delivering photons in 2011, becoming in late 2012 the first seeded facility open to external users worldwide. Since then, several tens of experiments have been carried out on the three operative endstations LDM, DiProI, and EIS-TIMEX. Starting from the commissioning phase, the transport and diagnostics system (PADReS) has been continuously developed and upgraded, becoming the indispensable interface between the machine and the experimental chambers. Moreover, PADReS itself has served as an active player for several machine studies as well as for various state-of-the-art experiments. In particular, some elements of PADReS have become key features to perform cutting edge experiments: the online energy spectrometer, the active optics refocusing systems, the split and delay line, and so on. For each of them the peculiar advantages will be described showing the actual implementation in the experiments. The experience gathered so far in fulfilling the needs of both machine and experimental physicists will be discussed, with particular emphasis on the solutions adopted in different scenarios. Recurrent requests and major difficulties will be reported so to give a glimpse about the standard tasks to be solved when preparing new and demanding experiments. Finally, some ideas and near-future improvements will be presented and discussed.

We proposed a split and delay optics setup with Si(220) crystals combined with Kirkpatric-Baez mirror optics for x-ray pump-x-ray probe experiments at x-ray free-electron laser facilities. A prototype of the split-delay optics and its alignment procedure were tested at BL29XUL of SPring-8. The horizontal focal profile, measured via double-beam operation, showed good spatial overlap between the split beams with an FWHM of 100 nm, near the diffraction limit at 10 keV. High throughputs of the split-delay optics of 12% (upper) and 7.4% (lower) were obtained. The throughputs can be improved to 30% and 20% by optimizing the upper and lower central energy, respectively.

For the High Energy Density (HED) experiment [1] at the European XFEL [2] an x-ray split- and delay-unit (SDU) is built covering photon energies from 5 keV up to 20 keV [3]. This SDU will enable time-resolved x-ray pump / x-ray probe experiments [4,5] as well as sequential diffractive imaging [6] on a femtosecond to picosecond time scale. Further, direct measurements of the temporal coherence properties will be possible by making use of a linear autocorrelation [7,8]. The set-up is based on geometric wavefront beam splitting, which has successfully been implemented at an autocorrelator at FLASH [9]. The x-ray FEL pulses are split by a sharp edge of a silicon mirror coated with multilayers. Both partial beams will then pass variable delay lines. For different photon energies the angle of incidence onto the multilayer mirrors will be adjusted in order to match the Bragg condition. For a photon energy of hν = 20 keV a grazing angle of θ = 0.57° has to be set, which results in a footprint of the beam (6σ) on the mirror of l = 98 mm. At this photon energy the reflectance of a Mo/B₄C multi layer coating with a multilayer period of d = 3.2 nm and N = 200 layers amounts to R = 0.92. In order to enhance the maximum transmission for photon energies of hν = 8 keV and below, a Ni/B4C multilayer coating can be applied beside the Mo/B4C coating for this spectral region. Because of the different incidence angles, the path lengths of the beams will differ as a function of wavelength. Hence, maximum delays between +/- 2.5 ps at hν = 20 keV and up to +/- 23 ps at hν = 5 keV will be possible.

At the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) we have engineered a silicon prototype sample that can be used to reflect focused hard x-ray photons at high intensities in back-scattering geometry.1 Our work is motivated by the need for an all-x-ray pump-and-probe capability at X-ray Free Electron Lasers (XFELs) such as the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCSL) at SLAC. In the first phase of our project, we exposed silicon single crystal to the LCLS beam, and quantitatively studied the x-ray induced damage as a function of x-ray fluence. The damage we observed is extensive at fluences typical of pump-and-probe experiments. The conclusions drawn from our data allowed us to design and manufacture a silicon mirror that can limit the local damage, and reflect the incident beam before its single crystal structure is destroyed. In the second phase of this project we tested this prototype back-reflector at the LCLS. Preliminary results suggest that the new mirror geometry yields reproducible Bragg reflectivity at high x-ray fluences, promising a path forward for silicon single crystals as x-ray back-reflectors.

We present the design and characterization of a compact and portable spectrometer realized for photon in-photon out experiments (in particular X-Ray Emission Spectroscopy, XES), in particular tailored to be used at the FERMI freeelectron- laser (FEL) at ELETTRA (Italy). The spectrometer can be installed on different end stations at variable distances from the target area both at synchrotron and FEL beamlines. Different input sections can be accommodated in order to fit the experimental requests, with/without an entrance slit and with/without an additional relay mirror. The design is compact in order to realize a portable instrument within a total footprint of less than one square meter. The instrument is based on the use of two flat-field grazing-incidence gratings and an EUV-enhanced CCD detector to cover the 25-800 eV spectral range, with spectral resolution better than 0.2%. The absolute response of the spectrometer, has been measured in the whole spectral region of operation, allowing calibrated measurements of the photon flux. The characterization on the Gas Phase beamline at ELETTRA Synchrotron as instrument for XES and some experimental data of the FEL emission taken at EIS-TIMEX beamline at FERMI, where the instrument has been used for photon beam diagnostics, are presented.

We present the design of a time-delay-compensated monochromator explicitly designed for extreme-ultraviolet FEL sources, in particular the upcoming FLASH II at DESY (Hamburg). The design originates from the variable-line-spaced (VLS) grating monochromator by adding a second grating to compensate for the pulse-front tilt given by the first grating after the diffraction. The covered spectral range is 6-60 nm, the spectral resolution is in the range 1000–2000, while the residual temporal broadening is lower than 15 fs. Accounting for typical FLASH II divergences, the grazing angles on the different optics have been chosen so that the mirrors and gratings are respectively shorter than 500 mm and 300 mm. The proposed design: 1) minimizes the number of optical elements, since just one grating is added with respect to a standard VLS monochromator B-L; 2) guarantees high focusing properties in the whole spectral range of operation; 3) requires simple mechanical movements, since only rotations are needed to perform the spectral scan.

Analysis of single-shot, lasing-induced changes of the longitudinal electron bunch properties has proven invaluable for fs-scale reconstruction of otherwise difficult to measure x-ray FEL pulse profiles. In this talk, we report on measurements following the recent installation of an X-band transverse deflecting mode cavity at the LCLS. Limitations of the FEL pulse profiling technique employed are discussed. An unprecedented 1 to 3 fs RMS time resolution of x-ray and electron bunch profiles is demonstrated. Phenomena impacting x-ray FEL performance are also observed. The new tool is proven as a powerful diagnostic in support of user experiments and machine improvement studies.

FERMI, based at Elettra (Trieste, Italy) is the first free electron laser (FEL) facility operated for user experiments in seeded mode. Another unique property of FERMI, among other FEL sources, is to allow control of the polarization state of the radiation. Polarization dependence in the study of the interaction of coherent, high field, short-pulse ionizing radiation with matter, is a new frontier with potential in a wide range of research areas. The first measurement of the polarization-state of VUV light from a single-pass FEL was performed at FERMI FEL-1 operated in the 52 nm-26 nm range. Three different experimental techniques were used. The experiments were carried out at the end-station of two different beamlines to assess the impact of transport optics and provide polarization data for the end user. In this paper we summarize the results obtained from different setups. The results are consistent with each other and allow a general discussion about the viability of permanent diagnostics aimed at monitoring the polarization of FEL pulses.

Prisms deflect and disperse x-rays due to refraction very similarly to visible light. However, as the refractive index for X-rays is only very slightly different from unity and as it is even smaller than unity, the dispersion is found in the opposite direction compared to the visible range and it is observable only at very grazing incidence onto the refracting interface. Absorption will then limit the geometrical aperture of the prism to rather small dimensions. When the prism is further limited in length the aperture can be even smaller. In this case one will observe a small beam being refracted at the interface and as a result of this in the straight-through direction a small shadow. Both can easily be separated. It is proposed that this latter shadow can be used as a “negative” pinhole camera. Experimental data is presented for this application. It is discussed, that the quality of the refracting interface does not affect the shadow image and thus such device is well suited for the use at high power X-ray sources.

Intensity interferometry measurements were carried out to study the spatial coherence properties of a Free-Electron Laser (FEL) in the Self-Amplified Spontaneous Emission (SASE) mode in the hard X-ray regime. Statistical analyses based on ensemble averages of the spatial intensity correlation function were performed on a large number of pulses, overcoming challenges associated with the FEL beam being non-stationary in time and highly collimated. The second-order intensity correlation functions consistently show deviations from unity, reminiscent of the classical Hanbury-Brown and Twiss effect. They also exhibit a slow decaying spatial dependence at length-scales larger than the width of the beam, indicating a high degree of spatial coherence. These measurements are consistent with the behavior of a highly brilliant but chaotic source obeying Gaussian statistics as expected for a SASE FEL. Our study could be used to devise an in-line diagnostic capable of providing quasi real-time feedback for understanding and tuning the FEL process.