A compact gas attenuator for the SwissFEL ATHOS beamline realized using additive manufacturing

Gas attenuators are important devices providing accurate variation of photon intensity for soft X-ray beamlines. In the SwissFEL ATHOS beamline front-end the space is very limited and an innovative approach has been taken to provide attenuation of three orders of magnitude up to an energy of 1200 eV.

Additive manufacturing of a differential pumping system vacuum manifold allowed a triple pumping stage to be realized in a space of less than half a meter. Measurements have shown that the response of the device is as expected from theoretical calculations.