Optical design of an x-ray absorption spectroscopy beamline at Indus-2 synchrotron radiation source

Details of optical design of EXAFS beamline at Indus-2 SRS, under development at CAT, Indore, have been discussed in this report. This beamline will cover the photon energy range of 5 keV to 20 keV and will use a bent crystal of Si(111) having 2d value equal to 6.2709 A. It will accept a horizontal divergence of 1.5 mrad. The heart of the beamline is the bent crystal polychromator which will disperse and focus the synchrotron beam at the experimental sample position. The transmitted radiation from the sample will be, subsequently, detected by a position sensitive detector (CCD type). The detector length is 25 mm. Assuming a suitable value for the distance between the source and the crystal, we have computed several geometrical parameters of the beamline, such as, Bragg angle, crystal length, crystal radius, crystal to sample distance, sample to detector distance, etc. for three different photon energies, namely, 5 keV, 10 keV, and 20 keV. The band passes around these photon energies are 0.3 keV, 1 keV and 2 keV respectively. It has been found that computed geometrical parameters are well within acceptable limits. An extensive ray tracing work was done using the software program SHADOW to evaluate the imaging properties of the beamline. It was established that the image spot size at the sample position improved substantially when the crystal is changed from spherical cylinder shape to elliptic cylinder shape. From the ray intensity plots, the average resolution of the crystal bender was estimated to be 1 eV per channel. Finally based on the optical layout of the beamline, a schematic mechanical layout of the beamline has been prepared. (author)