Abstract
Due to their short wavelength, X-rays can in principle be focused down to a few nanometres and below. At the same time, it is this short wavelength that puts stringent requirements on X-ray optics and their metrology. Both are limited by today’s technology. In this work, we present accurate at wavelength measurements of residual aberrations of a refractive X-ray lens using ptychography to manufacture a corrective phase plate. Together with the fitted phase plate the optics shows diffraction-limited performance, generating a nearly Gaussian beam profile with a Strehl ratio above 0.8. This scheme can be applied to any other focusing optics, thus solving the X-ray optical problem at synchrotron radiation sources and X-ray free-electron lasers.
Highlights
Due to their short wavelength, X-rays can in principle be focused down to a few nanometres and below
Creating small and intense X-ray beams is crucial to confine the beam and concentrate the radiation onto the sample. This would require diffractionlimited X-ray optics with high numerical aperture (NA) that are at the same time stable in the intense X-ray freeelectron lasers (XFELs) pulses[1]
It is largely insensitive to small shape and surface inaccuracies of a few mm and can correct residual aberrations originating from surface errors of reflective optics, zone deformations in diffractive optics and accumulated surface errors in larger refractive lens stacks
Summary
Due to their short wavelength, X-rays can in principle be focused down to a few nanometres and below. We present accurate at wavelength measurements of residual aberrations of a refractive X-ray lens using ptychography to manufacture a corrective phase plate. Together with the fitted phase plate the optics shows diffraction-limited performance, generating a nearly Gaussian beam profile with a Strehl ratio above 0.8 This scheme can be applied to any other focusing optics, solving the X-ray optical problem at synchrotron radiation sources and X-ray freeelectron lasers. We present a general scheme to assess aberrations of an X-ray optical system under working conditions and correct them by introducing an appropriate X-ray phase plate into the optical path to achieve diffraction-limited focusing. The detailed knowledge of the complex wavefield was used to fabricate a corrective phase plate that compensates for the aberrations and creates a diffractionlimited focus when introduced into the beam following the lens. The method can be applied very generally to solve the X-ray focusing problem at synchrotron radiation sources and XFELs and will affect fields as diverse as X-ray microscopy and highresolution imaging[17,18], serial crystallography[19,20], creating matter in extreme conditions[21], nonlinear X-ray optics[22] and single-molecule imaging[23]
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