PERCIVAL is a novel soft X-ray detection system designed for the needs of modern microscopy. By integrating it into the TwinMic end-station at Elettra Sincrotrone Trieste, we conducted an exploratory computational microscopy experiment on biological samples, aiming at evaluating the entire system in a real use-case scenario. We present the methodology to convert the RAW data and our high-resolution image reconstructions.

In this study we report the synthesis of single crystals of burbankite, Na3Ca2La(CO3)5, at 5 GPa and 1073 K. The structural evolution, bulk modulus and thermal expansion of burbankite were studied and determined by two separate high-pressure (0–7.07(5) GPa) and high-temperature (298–746 K) in situ single-crystal X-ray diffraction experiments. The refined parameters of a second-order Birch–Murnaghan equation of state (EoS) are V0= 593.22(3) Å3 and KT0= 69.8(4) GPa. The thermal expansion coefficients of a Berman-type EoS are α0= 6.0(2) ×10-5 K−1, α1= 5.7(7) ×10-8 K−2 and V0= 591.95(8) Å3. The thermoelastic parameters determined in this study allow us to estimate the larger density of burbankite in the pressure-temperature range of 5.5–6 GPa and 1173–1273 K, with respect to the density of carbonatitic magmas at the same conditions. For this reason, we suggest that burbankite might fractionate from the magma and play a key role as an upper-mantle reservoir of light trivalent rare earth elements (REE3+).

The scope of this paper is to outline the main marks and performances of the MagneDyn beamline, which was designed and built to perform ultrafast magnetodynamic studies in solids. Open to users since 2019, MagneDyn operates with variable circular and linear polarized femtosecond pulses delivered by the externally laser-seeded FERMI free-electron laser (FEL). The very high degree of polarization, the high pulse-to-pulse stability, and the photon energy tunability in the 50-300 eV range allow performing advanced time-resolved magnetic dichroic experiments at the K-edge of light elements, e.g., carbon and at the M- and N-edge of the 3d-transition-metals and rare earth elements, respectively. To this end, two experimental end-stations are available. The first is equipped with an in situ dedicated electromagnet, a cryostat, and an extreme ultraviolet Wollaston-like polarimeter. The second, designed for carry-in user instruments, hosts also a spectrometer for pump-probe resonant x-ray emission and inelastic spectroscopy experiments with a sub-eV energy resolution. A Kirkpatrick-Baez active optics system provides a minimum focus of ∼20×20μm2 FWHM at the sample. A pump laser setup, synchronized with the FEL-laser seeding system, delivers sub-picosecond pulses with photon energies ranging from the mid-IR to near-UV for optical pump-FEL probe experiments with a minimal pump-probe jitter of few femtoseconds. The overall combination of these features renders MagneDyn a unique state-of-the-art tool for studying ultrafast magnetic and resonant emission phenomena in solids.

Soft X-ray microscopy coupled with low energy X-ray fluorescence is a powerful tool for investigating complex biological systems like cells and tissues. Due to certain characteristics of X-ray sources, sample stage motors, and detectors, the examination of large areas at high resolutions is very time consuming, often confining the analysis only to a restricted number of pre-selected representative regions. Here we propose and demonstrate a compressive sensing method that provides an alternative approach for overcoming such limitations and can be applied to different kinds of samples and other microscopy and analytical techniques.

Progress in nanotechnology calls for material probing techniques of high sensitivity and resolution. Such techniques are also used for high-impact studies of nanoscale materials in medicine and biology. Soft X-ray microscopy has been successfully used for investigating complex biological processes occurring at micrometric and sub-micrometric length scales and is one of the most powerful tools in medicine and the life sciences. Here, we present the capabilities of the TwinMic soft X-ray microscopy end-station at the Elettra synchrotron in the context of medical and biological imaging, while we also describe novel uses and developments.

X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF) scanning is a widespread technique of high importance and impact since it provides chemical composition maps crucial for several scientific investigations. There are continuous requirements for larger, faster and highly resolved acquisitions in order to study complex structures. Among the scientific applications that benefit from it, some of them, such as wide scale brain imaging, are prohibitively difficult due to time constraints. However, typically the overall XRF imaging performance is improving through technological progress on XRF detectors and X-ray sources. This paper suggests an additional approach where XRF scanning is performed in a sparse way by skipping specific points or by varying dynamically acquisition time or other scan settings in a conditional manner. This paves the way for Compressive Sensing in XRF scans where data are acquired in a reduced manner allowing for challenging experiments, currently not feasible with the traditional scanning strategies. A series of different compressive sensing strategies for dynamic scans are presented here. A proof of principle experiment was performed at the TwinMic beamline of Elettra synchrotron. The outcome demonstrates the potential of Compressive Sensing for dynamic scans, suggesting its use in challenging scientific experiments while proposing a technical solution for beamline acquisition software.

The recent development of ultrafast extreme ultraviolet (XUV) coherent light sources bears great potential for a better understanding of the structure and dynamics of matter. Promising routes are advanced coherent control and nonlinear spectroscopy schemes in the XUV energy range, yielding unprecedented spatial and temporal resolution. However, their implementation has been hampered by the experimental challenge of generating XUV pulse sequences with precisely controlled timing and phase properties. In particular, direct control and manipulation of the phase of individual pulses within an XUV pulse sequence opens exciting possibilities for coherent control and multidimensional spectroscopy, but has not been accomplished. Here, we overcome these constraints in a highly time-stabilized and phase-modulated XUV-pump, XUV-probe experiment, which directly probes the evolution and dephasing of an inner subshell electronic coherence. This approach, avoiding any XUV optics for direct pulse manipulation, opens up extensive applications of advanced nonlinear optics and spectroscopy at XUV wavelengths.

We demonstrate a novel timing tool for Free-Electron Lasers to determine the delay between an attosecond pulse train and infrared pulse with sub-optical-cycle resolu-. tion.

Attosecond pulses are central to the investigation of valence- and core-electron dynamics on their natural timescales1–3. The reproducible generation and characterization of attosecond waveforms has been demonstrated so far only through the process of high-order harmonic generation4–7. Several methods for shaping attosecond waveforms have been proposed, including the use of metallic filters8,9, multilayer mirrors10 and manipulation of the driving field11. However, none of these approaches allows the flexible manipulation of the temporal characteristics of the attosecond waveforms, and they suffer from the low conversion efficiency of the high-order harmonic generation process. Free-electron lasers, by contrast, deliver femtosecond, extreme-ultraviolet and X-ray pulses with energies ranging from tens of microjoules to a few millijoules12,13. Recent experiments have shown that they can generate subfemtosecond spikes, but with temporal characteristics that change shot-to-shot14–16. Here we report reproducible generation of high-energy (microjoule level) attosecond waveforms using a seeded free-electron laser17. We demonstrate amplitude and phase manipulation of the harmonic components of an attosecond pulse train in combination with an approach for its temporal reconstruction. The results presented here open the way to performing attosecond time-resolved experiments with free-electron lasers. Generation of intense attosecond waveforms with independently controllable amplitude and phase is performed by using a seeded free-electron laser.

Synchrotron Low Energy XRF and STXM Dataset used in a research manuscript on "Compressive Sensing for Dynamic XRF Scanning". This dataset includes HDF5 files with XRF (/dante) and STXM (/andor) maps and metadata such as XRF lifetime and sample stage positions (/sample_motors). The dataset also includes as TIFF images various outputs such as the sparse maps, the masked areas and the results of in-painting methods. In the DAT file, there is the output of the fitted XRF data as ASCII from PyMCA. In HTML there is included the relevant part of the electronic logbook (DonkiLOG). These data were acquired during the beamtime experiments 20180178 and 20192072 in the TwinMic soft X-ray microscopy beamline of Elettra Sincrotrone Trieste.

In spite of the constant technological improvements in the field of detector development, X‐ray fluorescence (XRF) in the soft X‐ray regime remains a challenge. The low intrinsic fluorescence yield for energies below 2 keV indeed renders the applicability of low‐energy XRF still difficult.Here, we report on a new multi‐element multi‐tile detection system currently under development, designed to be integrated into a soft X‐ray microscopy end station. The system will be installed at the TwinMic beamline of Elettra synchrotron (Trieste, Italy) in order to increase the detected count rate by up to an order of magnitude. The new architecture is very versatile and can be adapted to any XRF experimental setup.Even though the first results of the previous version of such a multi‐element system were encouraging, several issues still needed to be addressed. The system described here represents a further step in the detector evolution. It is based on four trapezoidal‐shaped monolithic silicon drift detector tiles (matrices) with six hexagonal elements each equipped with a custom ultra‐low noise application‐specific integrated circuit readout. The whole signal processing chain has been improved leading to an overall increase in performances, namely, in terms of energy resolution and acquisition rates.The design and development of this new detection system will be described, and recent results obtained at the TwinMic beamline at Elettra will be presented. Future perspectives and improvements will also be discussed. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The recent advent of free-electron laser (FEL) sources is driving the scientific community to extend table-top laser research to shorter wavelengths adding elemental selectivity and chemical state specificity. Both a compact setup (mini-TIMER) and a separate instrument (EIS-TIMER) dedicated to four-wave-mixing (FWM) experiments has been designed and constructed, to be operated as a branch of the Elastic and Inelastic Scattering beamline: EIS. The FWM experiments that are planned at EIS-TIMER are based on the transient grating approach, where two crossed FEL pulses create a controlled modulation of the sample excitations while a third time-delayed pulse is used to monitor the dynamics of the excited state. This manuscript describes such experimental facilities, showing the preliminary results of the commissioning of the EIS-TIMER beamline, and discusses original experimental strategies being developed to study the dynamics of matter at the fs-nm time-length scales. In the near future such experimental tools will allow more sophisticated FEL-based FWM applications, that also include the use of multiple and multi-color FEL pulses.

The last decades have witnessed substantial efforts in the development of several detector technologies for X-ray fluorescence (XRF) applications. In spite of the increasing trend towards performing, cost-effective and reliable XRF systems, detectors for soft X-ray spectroscopy still remain a challenge, requiring further study, engineering and customization in order to yield effective and efficient systems. In this paper we report on the development, first characterization and tests of a novel multielement detector system based on low leakage current silicon drift detectors (SDD) coupled to ultra low noise custom CMOS preamplifiers for synchrotron-based low energy XRF. This new system exhibits the potential for improving the count rate by at least an order of magnitude resulting in ten-fold shorter dwell time at an energy resolution similar to that of single element silicon drift detectors.

Synchrotron and Free Electron Laser beamlines consist of a complex network of devices. Such devices can be sensors, detectors, motors, but also computational resources. The setup is not static and is often upgraded. The data acquisition systems are constantly challenged by such continues changes and upgrades, so a constant evolution of software technologies is necessary. DonkiOrchestra is a TANGO based framework developed at Elettra Sincrotrone Trieste that takes full advantage of the ZeroMQ distributed messaging system and supports both data acquisition and experiment control. In the DonkiOrchestra approach, a TANGO device referred to as Director, provides the logical organization of the experiment as a sequential workflow relying on triggers. Each software trigger activates a set of Players that can be hierarchically organized according to different priority levels. This allows for concurrency and map-reduce strategies. Data acquired by the Players is tagged with the trigger number and sent back to the Director which stores it in suitably structured HDF5 archives. The intrinsic asynchronicity of ZeroMQ maximizes the opportunity of performing parallel operations and sensor readouts. This paper describes the software architecture behind DonkiOrchestra, which is fully configurable and scalable, so it can be reused on multiple endstations and facilities. Furthermore, experimental applications, performance results and future developments are presented and discussed.

Elettra-Sincrotrone Trieste comprises Elettra synchrotron and FERMI free-electron laser. Combined, the two facilities serve 34 beamlines. The Scientific Computing Team supports the full data lifecycle. Proposal submission and evaluation are handled in the Virtual Unified Office. Data acquisition and experimental control are built on top of the TANGO control system on all but the oldest synchrotron beamlines. Data reduction, onand off-line analysis workflows and visualisation are supported by a common framework. Data is stored and catalogued with access through the web portal. Elettra implements the PaNdata-like data policy since 2014.

The Elastic and Inelastic Scattering (EIS) beamline at the free-electron laser FERMI is presented. It consists of two separate end-stations: EIS-TIMEX, dedicated to ultrafast time-resolved studies of matter under extreme and metastable conditions, and EIS-TIMER, dedicated to time-resolved spectroscopy of mesoscopic dynamics in condensed matter. The scientific objectives are discussed and the instrument layout illustrated, together with the results from first exemplifying experiments.

FERMI@ElettraisaFreeElectronLaser(FEL)userfacilitycurrentlyunderconstructionatSincrotrone Trieste inItaly.Itwillprovideaspatiallycoherentandtransform-limitedphotonbeaminthesub-ps regime,coveringtheVUV/SoftX-rayrange(from100downto1.33nm).Thankstoitshighfluencethis 4th generationlightsourcewillbeabletocreateandprobewarmdensematter(WDM)insidethe TIMEX end-station.SincetheWDMstatehasashortlifetime(afewps),measurementofbasicphysical quantities,suchastemperatureanddensity,isachallengeandnewapproachesareneeded.Forthis reason anewmethodhasbeenproposedformeasuringtemperatureusingaslowlyresponding pyrometricprobe(Principietal.,2010 [1]).However,thetechniquedoesrequirethespatialphoton beam profiletobeproperlyshapedatthesample.Thiscanbedoneusinganactiveoptic(i.e.a deformableplanemirror)placedbeforetheellipticalfocusingmirror.Ray-tracingsimulationsand metrologymeasurementsonaprototypehavebeenperformedandtheresultsarepresentedhere

Traditionally the computations on the Grid take place on the Computing Element. In the same line, the Instrument Element is meant to Grid-enable instrumentation. In this chapter we introduce a non-classical use of the Instrument Element where it serves as a virtual instrument for performing a computational task. Specifically it has been used as the interface to a Control System that executes a series of High Throughput Computing tasks in an On-Line manner. This had to be done in order to meet the special requirements of an application in the Synchrotron Radiation Facility Elettra. The instrument control in such institutions is often done through Distributed Control Systems. Such a system is TANGO and the Synchrotron Radiation Facility (SRF) Elettra among other synchrotrons is heavily based on it. The application was for a beamline working in medical imaging (SYRMEP) and aimed to be an improvement of an established Computed Tomography workflow. The task was the generation, in parallel, of sinograms of a specific data format based on the acquired X-ray absorption data. The target was the availability of the complete sinogram data set in a Storage Element by the time of the completion of the CT scan. The Grid related latencies, like job submission and queuing, would have been an issue given the near-real-time requirements. Moreover the inclusion of a set of TANGO devices was necessary and a generic gLite WN would not have been as suitable as a dedicated system. Besides the avoidance of certain Grid parts, the Grid Security infrastructure was required to be fully utilised in the final solution. The design followed a bottom-up approach: (a) design and preparation of a dedicated system based on virtualisation, (b) development of a parallel sinogram generator, (c) deployment of suitable TANGO devices for controlling the data acquisition, the generator, and the On-Line progress, (d) a TANGO-to-IE bridge to export the devices as IM, (e) utilising a Grid Web Portal (VCR) in order to serve as the end-user GUI for the application. In this contribution (I) we introduce a novel concept where computation may take place outside the CE, (II) we design an architecture where a Distributed Control System is piloted by an Instrument Manager through the Grid, and (III) we discuss a working implementation of the system.

FERMI@Elettra is a new 4 th -generation light source based on a seeded Free Electron Laser (FEL) presently under commissioning in Trieste, Italy. It is the first seeded FEL ever designed to produce fundamental output wavelength down to 4 nm with High Gain Harmonic Generation (HGHG). Unlike storage ring based synchrotron light sources that are well known machines, the commissioning of a new-concept FEL is a complex and time-consuming process consisting in thorough testing, understanding and optimization, in which a reliable and powerful control system is mandatory. In particular, integrated shot-by-shot beam manipulation capabilities and easy-to-use high level applications are crucial to allow an effective and smooth machine commissioning. This paper reports the status of the control system and the experience gained in two years of alternating construction and commissioning phases.