Zone Plates for Hard X-Ray FEL Radiation.

We investigated theoretically the use of zone plates for the focusing of the European X-ray Free Electron Laser (XFEL). In a finite-element simulation the heat load on zone plates placed in the high intensity x-ray beam was simulated for four different zone plate materials: gold, iridium, tungsten, and CVD diamond. The main result of the calculations is that all zone plates remain below the melting temperature throughout a full XFEL pulse train of 3000 pulses. However, if the zone plate is placed in the direct beam it will experience large and rapid temperature fluctuations on the order of 300 K. The situation is relaxed if the optic is placed behind a monochromator and the fluctuations are reduced to around 20 K. Besides heat load, the maximization of the total efficiency of the complete optical system is an important issue. We calculated the efficiency of different zone plates and monochromator systems and found that the final beam size of the XFEL in combination with its monochromaticity will be important parameters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]