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At Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's Advanced Light Source, we are developing x-ray wavefront sensors to support the creation and operation of beamlines with diffraction-limited quality. Our new approach to rapid, intermittent wavefront sensing operates in reflection at glancing incidence angles and is compatible with the high-power densities of modern beamlines. For soft x-ray applications especially, the wavefront sensor can operate upstream of the exit slit in a vertically dispersed beam. This single-shot technique supports lateral shearing interferometry and Hartmann wavefront sensing; it can be adapted to speckle-based techniques as well. The reflected beam is directed to an off-axis YAG crystal that produces scintillated visible light. A small mirror reflects the light to a microscope and camera, and the measured wavefront shape information can be used as feedback to adaptive x-ray mirror elements. A compact array of gratings enables measurement across a broad range of photon energies or wavefront curvatures. We describe recent demonstrations at soft x-ray and hard x-ray wavelengths measuring an adaptive x-ray mirror, and a toroidal focusing mirror.

By illuminating matter with bright and intense light, researchers gain insights into material composition and properties. In the regime of extremely short wavelengths, X-ray free-electron lasers (XFELs) with exceptional peak brilliance have unveiled crucial details about the structures, dynamics and physics of various materials. Although X-ray focusing optics to enhance the intensity have progressed, achieving a single-nanometre focal spot that fully exploits the source performance remains elusive. Aberrations arising from reflective optical schemes noticeably degrade the focal spot, even in the presence of inevitably slight angular transition and pointing errors. Here we present an approach that directly forms a source image in an extremely small focal spot, achieving 7 nm focusing, in both transverse dimensions, of 9.1 keV XFELs with the extremely high intensity of 1.45 × 1022 W cm−2. This was made possible by a scheme combining concave and convex X-ray mirrors with suppressed aberrations and high angular tolerances. The attained highly intense X-rays, surpassing the previous intensity by a hundred-fold, induced the vigorous ionization of chromium, suggesting the creation of solid-density heavy bare atomic nuclei. Our results, which demonstrate the realization of stable ultraintense XFEL beams by forming demagnified source images, hold immediate significance to a wide range of research fields, including atomic, molecular and optical physics and high-energy-density sciences. Researchers focused hard X-rays from a free-electron laser down to transverse dimensions of ~7 nm × 7 nm, enabling a two-order increase in intensity of photons and yielding access to the elusive 1022 W cm−2 regime. Such intense, short-wavelength electromagnetic radiation may probe atomic, molecular and optical physics with extremely high resolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previously, we developed an abrasive-free polishing technique called catalyst-referred etching (CARE) for inorganic materials. In this method, the topmost site of the workpiece surface is preferentially removed via an indirect hydrolysis reaction promoted by a metal catalyst. In this study, we proposed applying the CARE method to polymer material polishing and demonstrated the polishing characteristics. Using the CARE method, polycarbonate, which has an easy cleavage of ester bond via hydrolysis, was polished, resulting in the smoothness of the surface roughness below 1.0 nm. Based on the surface observations, the removal mechanism was estimated as follows. Molecule chains are entangled to form clusters constituting the polymer surface and help determine the surface roughness. In the CARE method, the top of this cluster was selectively removed, thus creating a smooth surface. Polymers with C–C bonds, such as polymethyl methacrylate and fluorinated ethylene propylene, were also smoothed using the CARE method. These results indicate that the CARE method is highly effective in polishing polymer materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A catalytically assisted etching method, named Catalyst-Referred Etching (CARE) was applied to the planarization of Lithium Niobate (LN) surface, which is widely used for optical waveguides, optical modulators, piezoelectric applications. The study demonstrates that an atomically smooth surface with less than 0.1 nm root-mean-square roughness could be achieved on a LN substrate using a thin metal film and pure water as the catalyst and etching solution, respectively. All residual stress and surface damage could be removed completely thanks to the removal mechanism of CARE.

We will review the current status and perspectives of x-ray mirror design, fabrication, and metrology to respond to the demand for optics for next generation light sources. The presentation will be based on our own experience, as well as on materials and discussions from two recent meetings: the International Workshop on X-ray Mirror Design, Fabrication, and Metrology (September 22-24, 2009, Osaka University, Suita, Osaka, Japan), and the EuroFEL Workshop on Photon Beamlines and Diagnostics (June 28-30, 2010, DESY, Hamburg, Germany).

The International Workshop on X-Ray Mirror Design, Fabrication, and Metrology (IWXM), Osaka, Japan, was held as a satellite meeting of the Conference on Synchrotron Radiation Instrumentation (SRI) 2009, Melbourne, Australia, in October, 2009. The workshop was organized by a collaboration of scientists from a number of leading synchrotron institutions and universities around the World, such as Osaka University, SPring-8, KEK (Japan), ALS, APS and NSLS (USA), ELETTRA (Italy), ESRF, Synchrotron SOLEIL (France), BESSY (Germany), Diamond (UK), SSRF (China), NSRRC (Taiwan) and PAL (Korea). The workshop followed a series of parallel workshops focused on metrology (1st, 2nd and 3rd International Workshop on Metrology for X-ray and Neutron Optics) and on active X-ray optics (1st and 2nd X-ray and XUV Active Optics Workshop, ACTOP06 and ACTOP08) and included the 3rd workshop on X-ray and EUV active optics (ACTOP09). The workshop brought together more than 100 participants: manufacturers, optical and mechanical engineers, designers, and users of X-ray optics; allowing for free exchange of ideas, highlighting of existing problems and challenges, and searching for ways to improve existing instrumentation for sub-microradian and sub-nanometer accuracy. A visit to the Osaka University mirror fabrication laboratory, SPring-8, and the X-ray free electron laser (XFEL) facility was included in the workshop.

Since the invention of the first lasers in the visible-light region, research has aimed to produce short-wavelength lasers that generate coherent X-rays (1,2); the shorter the wavelength, the better the imaging resolution of the laser and the shorter the pulse duration, leading to better temporal resolution in probe measurements. Recently, free-electron lasers based on self-amplified spontaneous emission (3,4) have made it possible to generate a hard-X-ray laser (that is, the photon energy is of the order of ten kiloelectronvolts) in an angstrom-wavelength regime (5,6), enabling advances in fields from ultrafast X-ray spectrosopy to X-ray quantum optics. An atomic laser based on neon atoms and pumped by a soft-X-ray (that is, a photon energy of less than one kiloelectronvolt) free-electron laser has been achieved at a wavelength of 14 nanometres (7). Here, we use a copper target and report a hard-X-ray inner-shell atomic laser operating at a wavelength of 1.5 angstroms. X-ray free-electron laser pulses with an intensity of about [10.sup.19] watts per square centimetre (7,8) tuned to the copper K-absorption edge produced sufficient population inversion to generate strong amplified spontaneous emission on the copper Kα lines. Furthermore, we operated the X-ray free-electron laser source in a two-colour mode (9), with one colour tuned for pumping and the other for the seed (starting) light for the laser., We found that temporal coherence was greatly improved in the pumped copper (Cu) medium using the X-ray free-electron laser (XFEL) seeding method. For the hard-X-ray atomic laser, both narrow bandwidth [...]