XMCD microscopy with synchronized soft X-ray and laser pulses at PETRA III for time-resolved studies

We present the setup of a new transmission X-ray microscope using zone plates at the soft X-ray beamline P04 at PETRA III, designed to utilize the X-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD) contrast for imaging the magnetic orientation of nanostructured materials. We present the first results obtained with this setup at PETRA III using vacuum chambers with built-in multi-axis micropositioning stages that can be easily customized to mount a variety of components like condenser, samples, coils, zone plates etc. For further experiments the X-ray microscope will be equipped with a synchronized femtosecond laser system to implement a time-resolved detection of transient magnetic states in nanostructured media using a pump-probe scheme. The synchronization between laser and X-ray pulses has already been demonstrated at both the P04 and P11 beamlines at PETRA III with a jitter of σ < 15 ps