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X-ray free-electron lasers (FELs) are being recognized as a powerful tool in an ever-increasing number of research fields, but are very limited as to the number of experiments that they can support. This work shows that more beamtime could be made available by using `parasitic' geometries, where a secondary experiment uses the X-ray beam that the primary experiment does not utilize. The first successful ptychography experiment, a scanning coherent diffractive imaging technique, in a parasitic geometry at an X-ray FEL is demonstrated. Utilizing the CXI hutch at the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS), it is shown that the obtained data are of high quality and that characterizing the beam using ptychography can be much faster than traditional imprinting methods.

Magnetic frustration can produce exotic spin configurations and dynamics. Here, the authors explore the seemingly simple competition between ferromagnetic nearest- and antiferromagnetic next-nearest neighbor interactions along Ising spin chains, as realized in the magnetoelectric compound Lu${}_{2}$CoMnO${}_{6}$. Commonly, this situation is described by the axial next-nearest-neighbor Ising model. For the first time, the authors measure and calculate its correlated magnetic dynamics, resulting from a characteristic fractal set of first-order phase boundaries. Experiments and Monte Carlo simulations reveal a dynamics slowdown while approaching the phase transition regime.