LCLS Ultrafast Science Instruments:Conceptual Design Report

The Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), along with Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), and the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), is constructing a Free-Electron Laser (FEL) facility, which will operate in the wavelength range 1.5 nm - 0.15 nm. This FEL, the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS), utilizes the SLAC linac and will produce sub-picosecond pulses of short wavelength X-rays with very high peak brightness and almost complete transverse coherence. The final one-third of the SLAC linac will be used as the source of electrons for the LCLS. The high energy electrons will be transported across the SLAC Research Yard, into a tunnel which will house a long undulator. In passing through the undulator, the electrons will be bunched by the force of their own synchrotron radiation and produce an intense, monochromatic, spatially coherent beam of X-rays. By varying the electron energy, the FEL X-ray wavelength will be tunable from 1.5 nm to 0.15 nm. The LCLS will include two experimental halls as well as X-ray optics and infrastructure necessary to create a facility that can be developed for research in a variety of disciplines such as atomic physics, materials science, plasma physics and biosciences. This Conceptual Design Report, the authors believe, confirms the feasibility of designing and constructing three X-ray instruments in order to exploit the unique scientific capability of this new LCLS facility. The technical objective of the LCLS Ultrafast Science Instruments (LUSI) project is to design, build, and install at the LCLS three hard X-ray instruments that will complement the initial instrument included in the LCLS construction. As the science programs advance and new technological challenges appear, instrumentation needs to be developed and ready to conquer these new opportunities. The LCLS instrument concepts have been developed in close consultation with the scientific community through a series of workshops team meetings and focused reviews. In particular, the LUSI project instruments have been identified as meeting the most urgent needs of the scientific community based on the advice of the LCLS Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC) in response to an open call for letters of intent (LOI) from the breadth of the scientific community

Photon Beamlines and Diagnostics at LCLS

The Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) is the first hard-x-ray free electron laser in operation. The turn-on of LCLS was rapid and operation has been reliable. Performance has exceeded the design parameters in several areas. The photon energy output covers a range from 480 eV to over 9 keV; the pulse energy is typically 2-3 mJ, with a maximum of 4 mJ at 2 keV. Electron pulse lengths can be varied from 500 fs to shorter than 10 fs. A low-charge option at 20 pC is being explored, which delivers pulses shorter than 10 fs with a reduced pulse energy, typically around 0.2 mJ. On-demand, single-shot and multi-shot modes up to 60 Hz (planned is 120 Hz) can be made available. The photon diagnostics built for LCLS have been commissioned and provide measurements of various properties of the FEL beam, such as pulse energy, beam size and position, wavelength, and allows for intensity attenuation over the entire wavelength range. The two soft x-ray instruments, the Atomic Molecular and Optics (AMO) and Soft X-ray Material Science (SXR) stations, are fully operational and completed their second user run in mid September 2010. The third user run is scheduled from October to December 2010, and will include the first hard x-ray instrument X-ray Pump-and-Probe (XPP). Three additional hard x-ray stations will follow: CXI (Coherent X-ray Imaging) is planned to start commissioning in December 2010, the XCS (X-ray correlation spectroscopy) instrument will start in June 2011, and the station for Matter in Extreme Conditions (MEC) in 2012. A list of past and future milestones for LCLS commission and operations is shown in table 1. The LCLS hard x-ray Free Electron Laser at SLAC reported first lasing in April of 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 of 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