The name of an author in the article by Walter et al. (2022) [J. Synchrotron Rad. 29, 957–968] is corrected.

The newly constructed time-resolved atomic, molecular and optical science instrument (TMO) is configured to take full advantage of both linear accelerators at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, the copper accelerator operating at a repetition rate of 120 Hz providing high per-pulse energy as well as the superconducting accelerator operating at a repetition rate of about 1 MHz providing high average intensity. Both accelerators power a soft X-ray free-electron laser with the new variable-gap undulator section. With this flexible light source, TMO supports many experimental techniques not previously available at LCLS and will have two X-ray beam focus spots in line. Thereby, TMO supports atomic, molecular and optical, strong-field and nonlinear science and will also host a designated new dynamic reaction microscope with a sub-micrometer X-ray focus spot. The flexible instrument design is optimized for studying ultrafast electronic and molecular phenomena and can take full advantage of the sub-femtosecond soft X-ray pulse generation program.

Vol. 35, No. 2, 2022, Synchrotron radiation newS Technical RepoRT The X-ray Focusing System at the Time-Resolved AMO Instrument Matthew Seaberg,1 Lance Lee,1 DanieL Morton,1 XinXin cheng,1 JaMeS cryan,1,2 gregorio ivan curieL,1 brenDan DiX,1 taran Driver,1 Kay FoX,1 corey harDin,1 anDrei KaMaLov,1 Kenan Li,1 Xiang Li,1 Ming-Fu Lin,1 yanwei Liu,1 tiM Montagne,1 razib obaiD,1 anne SaKDinawat,1 Peter SteFan,1 ranDy whitney,1 thoMaS woLF,1,2 Lin zhang,1 DaviD Fritz,1 Peter waLter,1 DanieLe cocco,3 anD May Ling ng1 1SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Menlo Park, California, USA 2Stanford PULSE Institute, Menlo Park, California, USA 3Advanced Light Source, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California, USA

For the LCLS-II X-ray instruments, we have developed laser power meters as compact X-ray power monitors. A calibration of the responsivity of the power meters was carried out against a silicon photodiode with synchrotron radiation and a gas monitor detector with FEL X-rays. A manipulator with two power meters was installed in various locations at the LCLS. In the LCLS front end, the power meters were compared with the gas detectors, which are calibrated by the electron energy loss method. The agreement between the power meters and the gas detectors was better than 20% at 1500 eV with the pulse energy measured by the gas detectors higher than that from the power meters. In the AMO instrument, the power meters evaluated the improvement in beamline transmission caused by the oxygen plasma cleaning of the Kirkpatrick-Baez mirrors. Measurements were also conducted one and two years later to observe the effect of further contamination of the optical surfaces. Finally at the SXR instrument, the power meters determined the pulse energy at the sample for a beamtime, where the X-ray intensity was an important parameter.

LCLS-2 is a high repetition rate (up to 1 MHz) superconducting FEL and the soft x-ray branch will operate from 0.2 to 1.3 keV. Over this energy range, there is a large variation in beam divergence and therefore, a large variation in the beam footprint on the optics. This poses a significant problem as it creates thermal gradients across the tangential axis of the mirror, which, in turn, creates non-cylindrical deformations that cannot be corrected using a single actuator mechanical bender. To minimize power loss and preserve the wave front, the optics requires sub-nanometer RMS height errors and sub-microradian slope errors. One of the key components of the beam transport in the SXR beamline is the bendable focusing mirror system, operated in a Kirkpatrick-Baez Configuration. For the first time in the Synchrotron or FEL world, the large bending needed to focus the beam will be coupled with a cooling system on the same mirror assembly, since the majority of the FEL power is delivered through every optic leading up to the sample. To test such a concept, we have developed a mirror bender system to be used as a multipurpose optic. The system has been very accurately modeled in FEA. This, along with very good repeatability of the bending mechanism, makes it ideal for use as a metrology tool for calibrating instruments as well as to test the novel cooling/bending concept. The bender design and the tests carried out on it will be presented.

The success of the LCLS led to an interest across a number of disciplines in the scientific community including physics, chemistry, biology, and material science. Fueled by this success, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory is developing a new high repetition rate free electron laser, LCLS-II, a superconducting linear accelerator capable of a repetition rate up to 1 MHz. Undulators will be optimized for 200 to 1300 eV soft X-rays, and for 1000 to 5000 eV hard X-rays. To absorb spontaneous radiation, higher harmonic energies and deflect the x-ray beam to various end stations, the transport and diagnostics system includes grazing incidence plane mirrors on both the soft and Hard X-ray beamline.To deliver the FEL beam with minimal power loss and wavefront distortion, we need mirrors of height errors below 1nm rms in operational conditions. We need to mitigate the thermal load effects due to the high repetition rate. The absorbed thermal profile is highly dependent on the beam divergence, and this is a function of the photon energy. To address this complexity, we developed a mirror cradle with variable length cooling and first order curve correction. Mirror figure error is minimized using variable length water-cooling through a gallium-indium eutectic bath. Curve correction is achieved with an off-axis bender that will be described in details.We present the design features, mechanical analysis and results from optical and mechanical tests of a prototype assembly, with particular regards to the figure sensitivity to bender corrections.

To cover a large photon energy range, the length of an X-ray mirror is often longer than the beam footprint length for much of the applicable energy range. To limit thermal deformation of such a water-cooled X-ray mirror, a technique using side cooling with a cooled length shorter than the beam footprint length is proposed. This cooling length can be optimized by using finite-element analysis. For the Kirkpatrick-Baez (KB) mirrors at LCLS-II, the thermal deformation can be reduced by a factor of up to 30, compared with full-length cooling. Furthermore, a second, alternative technique, based on a similar principle is presented: using a long, single-length cooling block on each side of the mirror and adding electric heaters between the cooling blocks and the mirror substrate. The electric heaters consist of a number of cells, located along the mirror length. The total effective length of the electric heater can then be adjusted by choosing which cells to energize, using electric power supplies. The residual height error can be minimized to 0.02 nm RMS by using optimal heater parameters (length and power density). Compared with a case without heaters, this residual height error is reduced by a factor of up to 45. The residual height error in the LCLS-II KB mirrors, due to free-electron laser beam heat load, can be reduced by a factor of ∼11 below the requirement. The proposed techniques are also effective in reducing thermal slope errors and are, therefore, applicable to white beam mirrors in synchrotron radiation beamlines.

An accelerator test stand has been constructed at SLAC to characterize laser-assisted photocathode processing, electron beam emission physics and front-end RF gun performance. The objective of the research program is to identify definitive ‘recipes’ for high-reliability photocathode preparation resulting in persistent high quantum efficiency and low beam emittance. In this paper we report on timing, optics and instrumentation for the Ti:Sapphire drive laser and diagnostics for the electron beam.

A new laser laboratory has been constructed at SLAC to test and characterize photocathode gun physics and develop diagnostics for ultrafast FEL applications. At the heart of the laboratory is a dual-purpose Ti:Sapphire oscillator/regen laser that can deliver either 1.5-3.5 ps or 25 fs pulse durations. The primary objectives of the photocathode research are to identify reliable Cu cathode cleaning recipes and to produce high quantum efficiency with low beam emittance. The ultrafast applications program is presently aimed at developing spectral- encoding systems for shot-to-shot pulse arrival time diagnostics with 10's of fs timing resolution. In this paper we review the laser system and update status of the physics programs.

The Linac Coherent Light Source is an x-ray freeelectron laser at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. It produces coherent soft and hard x-rays with peak brightness nearly ten orders of magnitude beyond conventional synchrotron sources and a range of pulse durations from 500 to <10 fs. The facility has been operating at x-ray energy from 500 to 10,000 eV. Users have expressed great interest in doing experiments with xrays near the carbon absorption edge at 284 eV. We describe the operation and performance of the LCLS in the newly established regime between 250 and 500 eV.

We report on the performance and the operational experience of the LCLS RF gun copper photocathodes used during the LCLS run I, II, III and IV. We discuss the problems of cathode surface contamination and our experience with methods to remove such contamination. Techniques to obtain high quantum efficiency (QE) while preserving the low emittance quality are discussed. Furthermore, we will present the current status of the installed cathode, its quantum efficiency and the typical injector emittances of the extracted beam.

Laser-based techniques have been widely used for cleaning metal photocathodes to increase quantum efficiency (QE). However, the impact of laser cleaning on cathode uniformity and thereby on electron beam quality are less understood. We are evaluating whether this technique can be applied to revive photocathodes used for high-brightness electron sources in advanced x-ray free-electron laser (FEL) facilities, such as the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. The laser-based cleaning was applied to two separate areas of the current LCLS photocathode on July 4 and July 26, 2011, respectively. The QE was increased by 8-10 times upon the laser cleaning. Since the cleaning, routine operation has exhibited a slow evolution of the QE improvement and comparatively rapid improvement of transverse emittance, with a factor of 3 QE enhancement over five months, and a significant emittance improvement over the initial 2-3 weeks following the cleaning. Currently, the QE of the LCLS photocathode is holding constant at about 1.2 x 10(-4), with a normalized injector emittance of about 0: 3 mu m for a 150-pC bunch charge. With the proper procedures, the laser-cleaning technique appears to be a viable tool to revive the LCLS photocathode. We present observations and analyses for the QE and emittance evolution in time following the laser-based cleaning of the LCLS photocathode, and comparison to the previous studies, the measured thermal emittance versus the QE and comparison to the theoretical model.

The LCLS hard X-ray Free Electron Laser at SLAC reported first lasing in April 2009. Since then two successful user runs have been completed at the two soft X-ray stations. The first hard X-ray station has started commissioning in July 2010. Beam diagnostics play an essential role for tuning the machine and delivering the requested beam properties to the users. An overview of the LCLS photon diagnostics will be presented including some selected commissioning results. Plans for future improvements and upgrades will be briefly discussed.

The recently commissioned Linac Coherent Light Source is an X-ray free-electron laser at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. It produces coherent soft and hard X-rays with peak brightness nearly ten orders of magnitude beyond conventional synchrotron sources and a range of pulse durations from 500 to <10 fs (10 −15 s). With these beam characteristics this light source is capable of imaging the structure and dynamics of matter at atomic size and timescales. The facility is now operating at X-ray wavelengths from 22 to 1.2 Å and is presently delivering this high-brilliance beam to a growing array of scientific researchers. We describe the operation and performance of this new ‘fourth-generation light source’.

The Linac Coherent Light Source is an x-ray free-electron laser that recently demonstrated lasing in the 1.5-15 Å wavelength range. We report on luminescence measurements of a molecular nitrogen gas irradiated by ∼2  mJ, 80 fs x-ray pulses at energies of 0.83, 2.7, and 8.3 keV. These results provide a direct test of our current understanding of photoabsorption, electron dynamics, and fluorescence processes for such intense, ultrashort x-ray pulses. At 0.83 keV, the duration of the fluorescence signal depends strongly on space-charge effects. At 8.3 keV, space-charge effects are weak, and the signal duration is determined by the Auger electron dynamics.

We report our first in-situ measurements of relative undulator segment K-parameters made at the LCLS. The diagnostics, calibration, procedure, and early results are described. Measurement errors and noise are discussed and the outlook for near-term develop presented.

A systematic assessment of a variety of physics issues affecting the performance of the LCLS X-ray beam attenuator is presented. Detailed analysis of the gas flow in the gas attenuator and in the apertures is performed. A lot of attention is directed towards the gas ionization and heating by intense X-ray pulses. The role of these phenomena in possible deviations of the attenuation coefficient from its 'dialed in' value is evaluated and found small in most cases. Other sources of systematic and statistical errors are also discussed. The regimes where the errors may reach a few percent correspond to the lower X-ray energies (less than 2 keV) and highest beam intensities. Other effects discussed include chemical interaction of the gas with apertures, shock formation in the transonic flow in the apertures of the attenuator, generation of electromagnetic wakes in the gas, and head-to-tail variation of the attenuation caused by the ionization of gas or solid. Possible experimental tests of the consistency of the physics assumptions used in the concept of the gas attenuator are discussed. Interaction of X-rays with the solid attenuator (that will be used at higher X-ray energies, from 2.5 to 8 keV) is considered and thermo-mechanical effects caused by the beam heating are evaluated. Wave-front distortions induced by non-uniform heating of both the solid and the gas are found to be small. An overall conclusion drawn from the analysis presented is that the attenuator will be a reliable and highly versatile device, provided that some caution is exercised in its use for highest beam intensities at lowest X-ray energies.

The first X-ray free electron laser (XFEL) at keV energies will be the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS), located at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. Scheduled to begin operation in 2009, this first-of-a-kind X-ray source will produce ultra-short X-ray pulses of unprecedented brightness in the 0.8 to 8 keV first harmonic photon energy regime. Much effort has been invested in predicting and modeling the XFEL photon source properties at the undulator exit; however, as most LCLS experiments are ultimately dependent on the beam focal spot properties it is equally as important to understand the XFEL beam at the endstations where the experiments are performed. Here, we use newly available precision surface metrology data from actual LCLS mirrors combined with a scalar diffraction model to predict the LCLS beam properties in the experiment chambers.

The possibility of increasing the apertures of the LCLS gas attenuator/gas detector system is considered. It is shown that increase of the apertures from 3 to 6 mm, together with 4-fold reduction of the operation pressure does not adversely affect the vacuum conditions upstream or downstream. No change of the pump speed and the lengths of the differential pumping cells is required. One minor modification is the use of 1.5 cm long tubular apertures in the end cells of the differential pumping system. Reduction of the pressure does not affect performance of the gas attenuator/gas detector system at the FEL energies below, roughly, 2 keV. Some minor performance degradation occurs at higher energies.