23–28 Aug 2026
America/Los_Angeles timezone

2. CXLS Early Science and the Path Toward a Compact Coherent X-ray FEL

WEP02
26 Aug 2026, 17:00
1h
Poster Presentation Session 9: Novel Accelerator and FEL Concepts Wednesday Poster Session

Speaker

Nicholas Matlis (Arizona State University)

Description

The Compact X-ray Light Source (CXLS) at Arizona State University is a compact inverse-Compton-scattering (ICS) facility designed to provide femtosecond hard X-rays in a university laboratory environment. CXLS has entered commissioning and early-science operation, demonstrating stable operation of a 9.3 GHz X-band accelerator, synchronized picosecond laser systems, and femtosecond hard X-ray generation at 1 kHz repetition rate. Initial operation has produced hard X-rays near 9.25 keV with sub-ps duration, micron-scale source size, and timing jitter below 100 fs. Early experiments have commissioned the multimodal X-ray endstation for time-resolved diffraction and spectroscopy, including the first protein crystallography results obtained at CXLS.

This talk will summarize commissioning performance of the accelerator, RF, laser, and X-ray systems, including recent results from structural biology and quantum materials experiments. We will also discuss construction of the Compact X-ray Free-Electron Laser (CXFEL) which is underway. CXFEL extends the compact ICS architecture toward fully coherent soft X-ray pulses with femtosecond-to-attosecond duration. We’ll touch on the advanced beam manipulation methods, including nanopatterned electron beams and emittance-exchange concepts, for achieving coherent X-ray generation as well as future applications in structural biology, ultrafast chemistry, quantum materials, and multipulse/multicolor schemes.

Funding Agency

NSF award #AWD00038287: Mid-Scale RI-2 Consortium: Compact X-ray Free-Electron Laser Project (CXFEL)
NSF award #AWD00034342: Mid-Scale RI-1 (M1:DP): Compact X-ray Free-Electron Laser Project (CXFEL)

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Author

Nicholas Matlis (Arizona State University)

Co-authors

Dr Aaron LaForge (Arizona State University) Adil Ansari (Arizona State University) Alex Gardeck (Arizona State University) Arvinder Sandhu (Arizona State University) Casey Timms (Arizona State University) Dr Hao Hu (Arizona State University) Islam Shalaby (Arizona State University) Kevin Eckrosh (Arizona State University) Lucas Malin (Arizona State University) Mark Holl (Arizona State University) Prof. Petra Fromme (Arizona State University) Prof. Robert Kaindl (Arizona State University) Dr Sabine Botha (Arizona State University) Sami Tantawi (Arizona State University) Samuel Teitelbaum (Arizona State University) Mr Sean Tilton (Arizona State University) William Graves (Arizona State University)

Presentation materials

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