A spherical compound refractive lens to control x-ray beams

Compound refractive X-ray lens, consisting of a lot number of placed in-line concave microlenses, is a unique device to control X-ray beams. It works like ordinary refractive lens for visual light and, in contrast to other X-ray optical devices, is useful for forming image of X-ray source. The size of the source image S1 depends on the distance a between the source and the lens and may be calculated as S1=S M, where S is source size, M- magnification. The magnification M depends on a and b as M=b/a, where b is distance from the lens to the source image. This distance b satisfies to a well-known lens formula 1/a+1/b=1/f, where f is lens focal length. This lens property may be used for forming small-sized X-ray spots at a large enough distances from the lens. Such beams are of great interest for experiments on SAXS and X-ray diffraction. Here we report results of our first experiments in Istituto per lo Studio dei Materiali Nanostrutturati and Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati on using compound refractive X-ray lenses for forming X-ray beams.