Reminiscences of one of the founding Main Editors of JSR on its 30th anniversary.

Foreword to the virtual issue papers from the PhotonMEADOW2023 workshop.

Foreword to the virtual focused issue of Journal of Synchrotron Radiation on X-ray spectroscopy to understand functional materials: instrumentation, applications, data analysis.

This paper presents an overview of a major upgrade project of SPring-8, SPring-8-II, including ultra-low-emittance accelerator design and expected performances. The paper also discusses our approach towards the next generation light source aiming at the reduction of power consumptions.

Operation at lower wiggler magnetic field strength reduces dose rates by an order of magnitude, and suppresses the influence of harmonic radiation, of significance near 30 keV. Beam shaping filters modulate the incident beam for near constant transmitted signal and offer protection by reducing the average dose to the scanned volume at 30–100 keV by about 10% for biological samples of 35–50 mm in diameter and by 20–30% for samples of up to 160 mm in diameter.

Automated alignment methods have the potential to accelerate greatly the efficiency of experiments done at synchrotron facilities and are an important step towards fully autonomous beamlines. Presented here is a general implementation of Bayesian optimization that performs well on many beamlines across different facilities.

This work reports the structural effects on the focusing and imaging efficiency of 20–30 nm-resolution zone plates at Diamond Light Source and Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility. The zone width and the duty cycle were optimized using a modified beam-propagation method for peak efficiency, and the effect of residual resist was also explored using simulation and experimental measurements.

The derivation of the closed-form expression for a focusing hyperbolic mirror shape in a mirror-centered arrangement ideal for metrology, manufacturing and mirror bending is presented.

The Takagi–Taupin equations are solved in their simplest form (zero deformation) and equations of the diffracted and transmitted amplitudes are obtained using a matrix model. The theory presented is coded in the open-source software package crystalpy.

A high-transmission soft X-ray spectrometer has been developed and commissioned at the X-SPEC beamline of the KIT Light Source. With this spectrometer, single spectra can be measured with exposure times well below 1 s, allowing the rapid collection of full resonant inelastic soft X-ray scattering maps in less than one minute.

Neutralization of acidic solutions containing U (IV) and Ce (III) at room temperature in glove box atmosphere and in the presence of dithionite results in coprecipitation of these elements as amorphous solid solutions Ce_xU_1–xO_2±y. The solids were investigated by a variety of methods to determine the nature of the solid solutions formed, their composition and the valence state of Ce and U.

We have developed and successfully tested new environmental liquid cells for HAXPES studies using specially designed thin, low-stress silicon nitride membranes (15 to 25 nm thickness). The novel aspect is the fabrication of the membranes considering the geometry of the experimental setup, the dimensions of the beam and the use of platinum stripes to efficiently localize the membranes. The membranes are robust, able to withstand the 1 bar pressure difference between the liquid and vacuum, and the intense beam.

A computer vision algorithm for sample-position tracking on the order of dozens of micrometres is presented and its application to soft X-ray absorption spectroscopy in a high magnetic field, low-temperature endstation is demonstrated.

Compared with traditional imaging methods, the non-local characteristics of ghost imaging have the ability to greatly reduce the radiation dose of X-ray imaging in principle, and has important application prospects in radiation-sensitive fields such as biomedicine. Here a specially developed beam splitter applicable for the efficient implementation of X-ray ghost imaging is described.

X-ray multi-projection imaging (XMPI) is an emerging technology that enables the acquisition of millions of 3D images per second, useful for observing rapid, stochastic phenomena previously inaccessible to conventional tomography. This study explores XMPI schemes and optics compatible with synchrotron and XFEL beams, and it experiments with MHz-rate XMPI at the European XFEL.

A novel synchrotron X-ray imaging normalization technique is presented that allows for great mitigation of the presence of the double multilayer monochromator-induced stripe pattern while maintaining good resolution compared with classic flat-field correction.

A protocol for performing correlative micro-nanotomography with scanning electron microscopy analysis at the Advanced Light Source is described. The protocol was used for the analysis of basalt and serpentine mineral samples.

A novel in situ/operando method is introduced to measure the photon beam stability of synchrotron radiation, which can provide a fast way to measure the beam stability of different light sources including bending magnet and undulator with meV-level energy resolution and ms-level time response.

By thermal analysis of the reflection mirror in a free-electron laser under high repetition rates within the fluid and solid heat transfer method, the water temperature increase of the cooling tube was found to influence the wall temperature of the fluid–solid interface and results in an asymmetrical temperature distribution of the footprint centreline in the mirror. Here, a more accurate thermal analysis of the reflection mirror under a high heat load is presented that will improve the cooling scheme design of the mirror.

This paper describes the front ends and their components for the upgrade of the Swiss Light Source. Parts of the existing front ends are being refurbished while other components are completely new with enhanced cooling capacity and mechanical stability.

The VMXm beamline at Diamond Light Source enables macromolecular micro-crystallography near the physical limits achievable using synchrotron radiation.

Here, the design, alignment and data acquisition of a five-analyzer Johann spectrometer at the Inner Shell Spectroscopy beamline at the National Synchrotron Light Source II are presented.

An ultra-compact setup for in situ X-ray diffraction on the inelastic X-ray scattering beamline ID20 at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility is described.