Beamline Status

cSAXS, the dedicated beamline for coherent small-angle x-ray scattering, X12SA, produced first monochromatic light in May 2007. cSAXS was in operation for 'pilot users' between August to December 2007. Since January 2008 cSAXS has been in normal user operation. 

cSAXS is currently undergoing an upgrade of the sample table and beam conditioning equipment. Normal user operation will continue end of August again.

The monochromator allows to vary beam energy between 4.0keV and ~19.0keV. 

The undulator is routinely run at gaps as low as 4.65mm, allowing the following harmonics to be used for maximal flux:

At the moment, energy scans are possible only over a limited range for large changes in energy still require some manual refinement of the 2nd monochromator crystal Bragg angle. 

Beamline focusing optics have been demonstrated to produce a spot size at the sample plane, i.e., ~34m from the light source, < 5µm × 20µm. The focusing is variable and focusing in the detector rather than the sample plane is therefore feasible as well. 

Typically, for each experiment the sample environment is custom built. Some typically setups are shown under Endstations. Currently, we do not support a completely evacuated beam path/sample environment. 

Our primary detector, the PILATUS 2M, is fully operational. Different read out modes allow to use various subsets of modules. Other detectors are available as well, see Endstations for details. 

Our primary analysis tools is MATLAB. We happily provide routines for reading PILATUS output, radially integrating, low-order microscopy analysis, etc. to users. Typically, users will find the most up-to-date routines in ~/Data10/matlab. From time to time we update the version available online under Software 

Alternative analysis software, such as fit2d, IDL, or PRIMUS, is also available for analysis. However, we do not offer support for these programs.