Laboratory for Advanced Photonics (LAP)

During the past decade, scientists have put high effort to achieve sub-10 nm resolution in X-ray microscopy. Recent developments in high-resolution lithography-based diffractive optics, combined with the extreme stability and precision of the PolLux and HERMES scanning X-ray microscopes, resulted now in a so far unreached resolution of seven nanometers in scanning soft X-ray microscopy. Utilizing this highly precise microscopy technique with the X-ray magnetic circular dichroism effect, dimensionality effects in an ensemble of interacting magnetic nanoparticles can be revealed.

In a joint research effort, an international team of scientists lead by Emmanuelle Jal (Sorbonne Université) performed a time-resolved experiment at the FERMI free-electron laser to disclose the dynamic behavior of two magnetic element of a compount material in only one snapshot. The X-ray Optics and Applications group developed a dedicated optical element for this experiment that is usable with two different photon energies (colors) simultaneously.