The mechanical design and performance of a device to suppress higher orders of a spherical grating monochromator at a constant deviation angle is described. The higher order suppressor (HOS) is used for a scanning transmission x-ray microspectroscope beamline (PolLux) at a bending magnet of the Swiss Light Source (SLS). The instruments allow microspectroscopy in polymer science, of biological samples in the water window as well as the study of magnetic materials with circular or linear polarized light in a photon energy range of 200 eV to 1400 eV. The HOS uses three mirrors acting as a low pass filter for soft x-rays to improve the absorption spectroscopy of carbon, oxygen and nitrogen 1s core levels. The successful installation and operation of the HOS located after the monochromator is reported. First results obtained using samples from materials research and environmental sciences exemplify the improved spectroscopy capabilities of the instrument.
Short-pulse, high-intensity laser-plasma interactions are investigated experimentally with temporally and spectrally resolved soft x-ray diagnostics. We demonstrate that the pulse width of the laser-produced x rays emitted from solid targets may b e varied down to the picosecond time scale by adjusting the incident laser ux. Bright, picosecond, broadband emission, characteristic of a short-scale-length, high-density plasma, is produced only when a high laser contrast (10 10) is used. The results are found to be in qualitative agreement with both the predictions of a simple model of radiation from a collisionally dominated atomic system and the results from a numerical simulation.
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