Arterium Vacuum Beamline Modules

Description

Research experiments utilising EUV and soft X-ray light in the laboratory are coming of age and opening up exciting new opportunities for scientific discovery. As the applications continue to emerge, success hinges upon the marriage of an appropriate lab-based light source with the necessary experimental station, a connection that inevitably requires some type of beamline. Such beamlines have been classically built and maintained at major facilities at the expense of significant personnel, time, and financial resources, but it is becoming increasingly clear that a carefully engineered, efficient, and commercially supported design is a strong prerequisite for the continued adoption of EUV-based experimental techniques in the lab.

KMLabs XUUS consists of the necessary equipment for the generation of EUV laser light, but optical elements are required to connect the source to an experiment at high efficiency, stability, and flexibility under vacuum. This so-called vacuum beamline is an interconnected, evacuated, tubular conduit, which incorporates modular components that may be optionally and readily installed (by the customer) into the beamline and HHG system, as needed–without compromising the beamline vacuum. These modules are used to reject excess IR light, filter the EUV spectrum, focus the EUV light, monitor the EUV power, replace capillary waveguides, and more.

The fundamental high power IR light driving the HHG process is removed so that only the EUV or soft X-ray laser light can eventually interact with the sample, without any of the residual infrared light.
High pointing stability is guaranteed by the hollow core fiber architecture within the the XUUS source.
Depending on the experimental requirements, a monochromator is incorporated to select EUV photons from a single harmonic peak.
To propagate without significant attenuation, the beam is maintained under vacuum.
Space considerations are considered, as the total system needs to be appropriately sized for a laboratory setting.
Focusing of the EUV beam is considered if the experiment requires a particular beam spot size.
For a system with multiple experimental stations, the Aretriuim SwitchYard module is available to direct the EUV photons to the experimental / diagnostics chamber of choice.
Optics and windows are carefully selected to maximize efficiency and minimize dispersion effects which would distort/prolong the ultrashort pulses.
Diagnostics are incorporated so the beam quality and stability can be easily monitored.