Abstract

A ten-period undulator designed for soft x-ray output has been installed at the National Synchrotron Light Source. This undulator illuminates a beam line used for soft x-ray imaging which includes a heavily cooled pinhole for spatial collimation and a toroidal grating monochromator for wavelength selection. Using this beam line we have characterized the output of the undulator with magnetic parameter K ranging from 0.2 to 2.4. The results indicate that at the fundamental wavelength (17–70Å) the beam line produces the highest spatially coherent continuous flux in the world. The temporal coherence (100–3000 waves) can be made suitable for x-ray holography of biological specimens as well as for illumination of Fresnel zone plates.

© 1986 Optical Society of America