Large Scale Facilities

FEL Beam Focus Characterization

angular mirror alignment

FEL (free-electron laser) beams are used for highly precise material analysis applications as they create brightest Xray pulses. To allow micrometer to nanometer resolution in imaging and other applications the beam focus needs to be characterized and adjusted before exposing the sample to it. In XUV, this focus characterization can be realized very efficiently and online by a Hartmann wavefront sensor. 

Being the world´s first XUV and soft X-ray free-electron laser, FLASH (Free Electron Laser in Hamburg, constructed, designed and operated by DESY) offers such extremely bright, coherent and ultra-short XUV pulses to scientists from around the world. Inside a beamline vacuum two mirrors are used to steer the FEL beam (depending on wavelength) towards different wavefront sensors for alignment of the beamline optics. This requires ultra-precise and stable angular alignment of the beam with respect to the sensor and a positioning system, which reliably works in vacuum environments.

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