Scientific Instrument SCS

The Spectroscopy and Coherent Scattering (SCS) instrument will enable time-resolved experiments to unravel the electronic and structural properties of complex materials, molecules, and nanostructures in their fundamental space-time dimensions.

Scientific objectives include, but are not limited to, the understanding and control of complex materials, the investigation of ultrafast magnetization processes on the nanoscale, the real-time observation of chemical reactions in liquids, and the exploration of nonlinear X-ray spectrocopy techniques that are cornerstones at optical wavelengths.

The two baseline SCS experiment stations are complemented with a chemistry station and a high-resolution spectrometer by the Heisenberg RIXS (hRIXS) user consortium.  A combination of coherent X-ray scattering with spectroscopy methods will make it possible to investigate atomic as well as electronic details and dynamics on femtosecond time scales with spatial resolutions down to a few nanometers.

9th Call for Proposals: FFT and CHEM

We are happy to accept proposals for two experiment stations in this call: the forward-scattering fixed target (FFT) experiment station and the CHEM experiment station with liquid jet environment. FFT station can be combined with detectors for Small-Angle X-ray Scattering (SAXS), Coherent diffraction imaging (CDI), X-ray photon correlation spectroscopy (XPCS) as well as X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy (XAS). The afterburner Apple-X is in commissioning this year and will offer to users of this call circular and linear polarizations with basic functionality for instance for ultrafast magnetic studies exploiting magnetic CDI or X-ray Magnetic Circular Dichroism (XMCD) methodologies. The CHEM station holds a liquid-jet sample environment for Resonant Inelastic X-ray Scattering (RIXS) in back-scattering geometry. While other configurations are accepted, we have a standard configuration for the CHEM-RIXS.

Please contact the SCS team for further technical information about instrumentation in operation and discuss your experiment plans before submitting your proposal.

hRIXS instrumentation and information

We commissioned the hRIXS spectrometer during Spring period 2021 reaching up to 10,000 resolving power in a photon energy range between oxygen K edge and Cu L edges (0.5-1.0 keV). After a successful period of user-assisted commissioning in Februar and March of 2022, we will welcome first regular users scheduled for the second half of 2022. The XRD and CHEM experiment stations are available to users providing solid and liquid sample environments, respectively. For more information we refer to the agenda and information on the online seminar page, which we hosted on Oct 21st, 2021 at 5pm (CEST) to present users the outcome of the RIXS commissioning at the SCS instrument.