Development of a multi-lane X-ray mirror providing variable beam sizes

Grazing incidence mirrors are used on most X-ray synchrotron beamlines to focus, collimate or suppress harmonics. Increasingly beamline users are demanding variable beam shapes and sizes at the sample position. We have now developed a new concept to rapidly vary the beam size and shape of a focused X-ray beam. The surface of an elliptically figured mirror is divided into a number of laterally separated lanes, each of which is given an additional longitudinal height profile calculated to shape the X-ray beam to a top-hat profile in the focal plane. We have now fabricated two prototype mirrors and present the results of metrology tests and measurements made with one of the mirrors focusing the X-rays on a synchrotron beamline. We envisage that such mirrors could be widely applied to rapid beam-size switching on many synchrotron beamlines.