Evidence Hub

The diagnostics and laser infrastructure at the Soft X-ray Port of the European XFEL

Grychtol P, Vardanyan V, Bhardwaj P, Heber M, Doblas-Jimenez D, Tikhodeeva E, Molodtsov S, Izquierdo M

Journal of synchrotron radiation, 2026

1 citation

Abstract

The diagnostics and laser infrastructure of the Soft X-ray Port (SXP) at the European X-ray Free Electron Laser are presented. Designed as a supplementary open port, SXP aims to enhance the research capabilities alongside the existing baseline instruments at the SASE3 soft X-ray undulator exploiting the high repetition rate operation enabled by superconducting acceleration cavities. These instruments already support studies in atomic, molecular and non-linear optics (SQS), as well as condensed matter physics (SCS). The inception of SXP is largely motivated by the community involved in time-resolved X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (tr-XPES), focusing on material science dynamics at surfaces and interfaces. The dedicated endstation equipped with a time-of-flight momentum microscope allows for simultaneous recording of energy- and angle-resolved photoelectron distributions in a pump-probe setting, employing two synchronized femtosecond laser systems meant to cover a broad spectrum from the infrared to the extreme ultraviolet region. The alignment laser system, pump-probe laser transport, including the in-coupling optics, and the installed photon arrival-time monitor are described. Under the present operating conditions, however, the photon arrival-time monitor does not yet provide routine single-shot timing corrections, so the currently demonstrated temporal benchmark is obtained in situ at the tr-XPES endstation. Measurements on a patterned Au reference sample show that the…

Read the paper

Related studies

Go deeper in Evidence Hub

Evidence Hub adds a study data sheet (design, sample size, evidence level, key numbers), an AI summary and a chat grounded in the paper's text.

Open this study Sign up free