Free-electron lasers providing ultra-short high-brightness pulses of X-ray radiation have great potential for a wide impact on science, and are a critical element for unravelling the structural dynamics of matter. To fully harness this potential, we must accurately know the X-ray properties: intensity, spectrum and temporal profile. Owing to the inherent fluctuations in free-electron lasers, this mandates a full characterization of the properties for each and every pulse. While diagnostics of these properties exist, they are often invasive and many cannot operate at a high-repetition rate. Here, we present a technique for circumventing this limitation. Employing a machine learning strategy, we can accurately predict X-ray properties for every shot using only parameters that are easily recorded at high-repetition rate, by training a model on a small set of fully diagnosed pulses. This opens the door to fully realizing the promise of next-generation high-repetition rate X-ray lasers.

A recent experimental study [J.-E. Rubensson et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 83, 947 (1999)] measured a significant fluorescence yield of the He( 2lnl(')) photoexcited resonances, showing major qualitative differences from nonrelativistic predictions. We present a further theoretical study of these states, and perform R-matrix multichannel quantum defect theory calculations to extract fluorescence and ionization cross sections. These theoretical results are in excellent agreement with newer, higher-resolution measurements. Radiative and spin-orbit effects are quantified and shown to play an important role in the overall characterization of highly excited states.

SPECIES is an undulator-based soft X-ray beamline that replaced the old I511 beamline at the MAX II storage ring. SPECIES is aimed at high-resolution ambient-pressure X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (APXPS), near-edge X-ray absorption fine-structure (NEXAFS), X-ray emission spectroscopy (XES) and resonant inelastic X-ray scattering (RIXS) experiments. The beamline has two branches that use a common elliptically polarizing undulator and monochromator. The beam is switched between the two branches by changing the focusing optics after the monochromator. Both branches have separate exit slits, refocusing optics and dedicated permanent endstations. This allows very fast switching between two types of experiments and offers a unique combination of the surface-sensitive XPS and bulk-sensitive RIXS techniques both in UHV and at elevated ambient-pressure conditions on a single beamline. Another unique property of the beamline is that it reaches energies down to approximately 27 eV, which is not obtainable on other current APXPS beamlines. This allows, for instance, valence band studies under ambient-pressure conditions. In this article the main properties and performance of the beamline are presented, together with selected showcase experiments performed on the new setup.

With the invention of femtosecond X-ray free-electron lasers (XFELs), studies of light-induced chemical reaction dynamics and structural dynamics reach a new era, allowing for time-resolved X-ray diffraction and spectroscopy. To ultimately probe coherent electron and nuclear dynamics on their natural time and length scales, coherent nonlinear X-ray spectroscopy schemes have been proposed. In this contribution, we want to critically assess the experimental realisation of nonlinear X-ray spectroscopy at current-day XFEL sources, by presenting first experimental attempts to demonstrate stimulated resonant X-ray Raman scattering in molecular gas targets.

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