Picosecond x-ray emission spectroscopy at MHz repetition rates

by Dr Pieter Glatzel (ESRF)

Monday 11 Apr 2011, 11:00 → 12:00 Europe/Berlin

AER 19, 3.11

Energy analysis of emitted X-rays is experimentally rather simple to achieve and has now been performed for almost a century. With such a long history it seems at first surprising that this technique is now experiencing a steeply growing demand in the scientific community. One important reason is that improved theoretical tools tell us what we can learn from the spectra and we have moved on from a “finger-print” approach to a deep understanding of the electronic structure. The combination of X-ray emission spectroscopy (XES) with and a pump-and-probe setup to study ultra-fast changes of the electronic structure is therefore very appealing. However, XES experiments have low luminosity and are run at synchrotron radiation sources in single-photon counting mode. Up to very recently, such experiments were limited by the repetition rate of the pump laser of 1-3 kHz. We recently employed a laser at three orders of magnitude higher repetition rate with a dramatic increase of efficiency. Results from the ESRF and APS will be presented and an outlook will be given.