Research & Development

Planning of the photon transport system for SwissFEL. Optical layout of the Aramis and Athos beamlines. We built two hard X-ray beamlines at the Aramis undulator. The main components are the bendable offset mirrors, the double crystal monochromator and Kirkpatrick- Baez focusing mirrors. The beamlines delivered first light to an experiment in fall 2017. The commissioning is ongoing.

A LTP upgrade program has been launched to increase the functionality, accuracy and reliability of the LTP. The following milestones have been reached: (a) the original closed source controls system has been replaced by EPICS. This allows for instance automatic bender calibration in the production controls environment. (b) a new 2d-detector (high resolution CCD) allows more efficient setup and better resolution. (c) additional linear and rotation stages extend measurement capabilities, (d) psd evaluation is routinely available. Future plans: (a) improve calibration (b) additional encoder head for real time position readback, (c) fast on the fly scanning (d) 2017 new granite bench with vacuum- preloaded air bearings (e) complementary measurements with at wavelength Metrology.

As outcome of a cross proposal accepted in September 2011 a stand- alone wavefront sensor based on an interferometric method and diffraction gratings has been built. The sensor is now available at X05DA for quantitative at wavelength metrology of X-ray optics and phase measurements. Now we are working on software improvements and functionality extensions for FEL usage. The main topics are: real time data evaluation, single shot measurements with timing and synchronisation and measurements of strongly divergent beams.