We present a new method for generation of relativistic electron beams with current modulation on the nanometer scale and below. The current modulation is produced by diffracting relativistic electrons in single crystal Si, accelerating the diffracted beam and imaging the crystal structure, then transferring the image into the temporal dimension via emittance exchange. The modulation period can be tuned by adjusting electron optics after diffraction. This tunable longitudinal modulation can have a period as short as a few angstroms, enabling production of coherent hard x-rays from a source based on inverse Compton scattering with total accelerator length of approximately ten meters. Electron beam simulations from cathode emission through diffraction, acceleration, and image formation with variable magnification are presented along with estimates of the coherent x-ray output properties.

Neutron radiography is a powerful method of probing the structure of materials based on attenuation of neutrons. This method is most suitable for materials containing heavy metals, which are not transparent to X-rays, for example irradiated nuclear fuel and other nuclear materials. Neutron radiography is one of the first non-distractive post-irradiated examination methods, which is applied to gain an overview of the integrity of irradiated nuclear fuel and other nuclear materials. However, very powerful gamma radiation emitted by the samples is damaging to the electronics of digital imaging detectors and has so far precluded the use of modern detectors. Here we describe a design of a neutron microscope based on focusing mirrors suitable for thermal neutrons. As in optical microscopes, the sample is separated from the detector, decreasing the effect of gamma radiation. In addition, the application of mirrors would result in a thirty-fold gain in flux and a resolution of better than 40 μm for a field-of-view of about 2.5 cm. Such a thermal neutron microscope can be useful for other applications of neutron radiography, where thermal neutrons are advantageous.

Arizona State University (ASU) is pursuing a concept for a compact x-ray FEL (CXFEL) that uses nanopatterning of the electron beam via electron diffraction and emittance exchange to enable fully coherent x-ray output from electron beams with an energy of a few tens of MeV. This low energy is enabled by nanobunching and use of a short pulse laser field as an undulator, resulting in an XFEL with 10m total length and modest cost. The method of electron bunching is deterministic and flexible, rather than dependent on SASE amplification, so that the x-ray output is coherent in time and frequency. The phase of the x-ray pulse can be controlled and manipulated so that new opportunities for ultrafast x-ray science are enabled using attosecond pulses, very narrow line widths, or extremely precise timing among multiple pulses with different colors. These properties may be transferred to large XFELs through seeding with the CXFEL beam. Construction of the CXFEL accelerator and laboratory are underway, along with initial experiments to demonstrate nanopatterning via electron diffraction. An overview of the methods and project are presented.

During the report period, we continued the work as outlined in the original proposal. We have analyzed potential optical designs of Wolter mirrors for the neutron-imaging instrument VENUS, which is under construction at SNS. In parallel, we have conducted the initial polarized imaging experiment at Helmholtz Zentrum, Berlin, one of very few of currently available polarized-imaging facilities worldwide.

We present the design and performance parameters for a compact x-ray light source (CXLS), which is presently under construction, based on inverse Compton scattering (ICS) of a high brightness electron bunch on a picosecond laser pulse. The flux and brilliance of this source are orders of magnitude beyond existing laboratory scale sources. The accelerator operates at a repetition rate of 1 kHz with 100 bunches of 100 pC charge, each separated by 5 ns, in each shot. The entire CXLS is a few meters in length and produces hard x-rays tunable over a wide range of photon energies. The scattering laser is a Yb:YAG solid-state amplifier producing 100 mJ pulses at 1030 nm. The laser pulse is frequency-doubled and coupled into a ringdown cavity to match the linac pulse structure. At a photon energy of 12.4 keV, the predicted x-ray flux is 5 x 1011 photons/second in a 5% bandwidth and the brilliance is 2 x 1012 photons/(secmm2mrad20.1%) with a RMS pulse length of 490 fs. Novel concepts for improving the performance of the CXLS with the generation of relativistic electron beams having current modulation at nanometer scale and below are also discussed. This tunable longitudinal modulation enables the production of coherent hard x-rays with ICS.

A comprehensive description and ray-tracing simulations are presented for symmetric nested Kirkpatrick–Baez (KB) mirrors, commonly used at synchrotrons and in commercial X-ray sources. This paper introduces an analytical procedure for determining the proper orientation between the two surfaces composing the nested KB optics. This procedure has been used to design and simulate collimating optics for a hard-X-ray inverse Compton scattering source. The resulting optical device is composed of two 12 cm-long parabolic surfaces coated with a laterally graded multilayer and is capable of collimating a 12 keV beam with a divergence of 5 mrad (FWHM) by a factor of ∼250. A description of the ray-tracing software that was developed to simulate the graded multilayer mirrors is included.

A design for a compact x-ray light source (CXLS) with flux and brilliance orders of magnitude beyond existing laboratory scale sources is presented. The source is based on inverse Compton scattering of a high brightness electron bunch on a picosecond laser pulse. The accelerator is a novel high-efficiency standing-wave linac and rf photoinjector powered by a single ultrastable rf transmitter at X-band rf frequency. The high efficiency permits operation at repetition rates up to 1 kHz, which is further boosted to 100 kHz by operating with trains of 100 bunches of 100 pC charge, each separated by 5 ns. The entire accelerator is approximately 1 meter long and produces hard x rays tunable over a wide range of photon energies. The colliding laser is a $\mathrm{Yb}\ensuremath{\mathbin:}\mathrm{YAG}$ solid-state amplifier producing 1030 nm, 100 mJ pulses at the same 1 kHz repetition rate as the accelerator. The laser pulse is frequency-doubled and stored for many passes in a ringdown cavity to match the linac pulse structure. At a photon energy of 12.4 keV, the predicted x-ray flux is $5\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}1{0}^{11}\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{photons}/\mathrm{second}$ in a 5% bandwidth and the brilliance is $2\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}1{0}^{12}\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{photons}/(\mathrm{sec}\text{ }{\mathrm{mm}}^{2}\text{ }{\mathrm{mrad}}^{2}\text{ }\text{ }0.1%)$ in pulses with rms pulse length of 490 fs. The nominal electron beam parameters are 18 MeV kinetic energy, 10 microamp average current, 0.5 microsecond macropulse length, resulting in average electron beam power of 180 W. Optimization of the x-ray output is presented along with design of the accelerator, laser, and x-ray optic components that are specific to the particular characteristics of the Compton scattered x-ray pulses.

Neutron scattering is one of the most useful methods for studying the structure and dynamics of matter. Lacking electrical charge and interacting with atomic nuclei over a short range only, neutrons penetrate deep inside materials. As a result, neutron-scattering measurements can reveal, for example, atomic coordinates in crystal lattices, the molecular conformation of polymers, and structures of complex fluids. Neutrons are especially sensitive to light elements such as hydrogen. Consequently, neutron radiography is used to measure water distribution in roots of growing plants or in very thin ( 10 m) membranes enclosed inside working fuel cells. The neutron refractive index differs from that of the vacuum by only 10 6. Therefore, lenses have enormous focal lengths for neutron beams, and critical angles for total external reflection are normally no more than a few degrees, depending on the wavelength and the surface coating. The toolbox of neutron optics is thus relatively limited compared to modern optical instruments for visible light and x-rays, which use a variety of focusing devices, including lenses, zone plates, and mirrors. Existing techniques, such as neutron imaging1 and smallangle neutron scattering2, 3 (SANS), use instruments that are traditionally designed as pinhole cameras. Therefore, suitable focusing optics, if available, might bring transformative improvements of the instruments’ designs and enable new science by increasing the spatial and temporal resolution of neutron methods by orders of magnitude. We have pioneered and demonstrated novel neutron focusing optics based on axisymmetric grazing-incidence focusing mirrors (often referred to as Wolter optics)4–8 for neutrons, inspired by their successful use in x-ray astronomy.9 The mirrors have the potential to turn pinhole-camera-like neutron instruments into much more powerful microscopes (see Figures 1 and 2 for a Figure 1. Schematic of two ‘Wolter’ mirrors used as a magnifying lens (not to scale). The mirrors are segments of confocal ellipsoid and hyperboloid, respectively. To form an image, only neutrons that reflect from both mirrors sequentially are detected, which eliminates on-axis coma aberration. The beam stop, which absorbs neutrons not reflected by both mirrors, is shown as the black oval. The sample and the detector are placed in foci. The magnification M D f1=f2, where f1 and f2 are focal lengths. Only one mirror shell is shown for clarity, although multiple coaxial mirrors of increasing diameters can be used to improve the collection efficiency.4

An achromatic cold-neutron microscope with magnification 4 is demonstrated. The image-forming optics is composed of nested coaxial mirrors of full figures of revolution, so-called Wolter optics. The spatial resolution, field of view, and depth of focus are measured and found consistent with ray-tracing simulations. Methods of increasing the resolution and magnification are discussed, as well as the scientific case for the neutron microscope. In contrast to traditional pinhole-camera neutron imaging, the resolution of the microscope is determined by the mirrors rather than by the collimation of the beam, leading to possible dramatic improvements in the signal rate and resolution.

X-ray free electron laser studies are presented that rely on a nanostructured electron beam interacting with a “laser undulator” configured in the head-on inverse Compton scattering geometry. The structure in the electron beam is created by a nanoengineered cathode that produces a transversely modulated electron beam. Electron optics demagnify the modulation period and then an emittance exchange line translates the modulation to the longitudinal direction resulting in coherent bunching at x-ray wavelength. The predicted output radiation at 1 keV from a 7 MeV electron beam reaches 10 nJ or 6X10 8 photons per shot and is fully coherent in all dimensions, a result of the dominant mode growth transversely and the longitudinal coherence imposed by the electron beam nanostructure. This output is several orders of magnitude higher than incoherent inverse Compton scattering and occupies a much smaller phase space volume, reaching peak brilliance of 10 27 and average brilliance of 10 17

A Reply to the Comment by G. Stupakov, A. Zholents, and M. S. Zolotorev.Received 1 April 2013DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.111.019402© 2013 American Physical Society

Small-angle neutron scattering (SANS) is the most significant neutron technique in terms of impact on science and engineering. However, the basic design of SANS facilities has not changed since the technique’s inception about 40 years ago, as all SANS instruments, save a few, are still designed as pinhole cameras. Here we demonstrate a novel concept for a SANS instrument based on axisymmetric focusing mirrors. We build and test a small prototype, which shows a performance comparable to that of conventional large SANS facilities. By using a detector with 48-μm pixels, we build the most compact SANS instrument in the world. This work, together with the recent demonstration that such mirrors could increase the signal rate at least 50-fold, for large samples, while improving resolution, paves the way to novel SANS instruments, thus affecting a broad community of scientists and engineers.

We report high-resolution inelastic x-ray scattering measurements of the acoustic phonons in the single-layer cuprate $Bi_{2}Sr_{2-x)La_{x}CuO_{6+\delta}$. These measurements reveal anomalous broadening of the longitudinal acoustic phonon near the (1/4,1/4,0) wavevector. The observed wavevector and its doping dependence indicate the coupling of the phonons to an underlying electronic density wave state. In addition, a comparison of the scattered intensities for x-ray energy-gain and x-ray energy-loss indicates that both time-reversal and inversion symmetries are broken in the material. Upon cooling, the effects of symmetry breaking are enhanced in the pseudogap state.