The First Synchrotron Infrared Beamlines at the ALS: Spectromicroscopy and Fast Timing

TL;DR

This paper describes the commissioning and capabilities of two new synchrotron infrared beamlines at ALS, highlighting their advantages in brightness, fast timing, and spectral range for advanced IR spectroscopy and microscopy.

Contribution

It introduces two novel IR beamlines at ALS that leverage synchrotron properties for enhanced spectroscopy and microscopy applications.

Findings

Successful demonstration of fast timing using synchrotron pulses

High brightness enables microscopic IR spectroscopy

Wide spectral range with step-scan capability

Abstract

Two recently commissioned infrared beamlines on the 1.4 bending magnet port at the Advanced Light Source, LBNL, are described. Using a synchrotron as an IR source provides three primary advantages: increased brightness, very fast light pulses, and enhanced far-IR flux. The considerable brightness advantage manifests itself most beneficially when performing spectroscopy on a microscopic length scale. Beamline (BL) 1.4.3 is a dedicated FTIR spectromicroscopy beamline, where a diffraction-limited spot size using the synchrotron source is utilized. BL 1.4.2 consists of a vacuum FTIR bench with a wide spectral range and step-scan capability. This BL makes use of the pulsed nature of the synchrotron light as well as the far-IR flux. Fast timing is demonstrated by observing the pulses from the electron bunch storage pattern at the ALS. Results from several experiments from both IR beamlines will be presented as an overview of the IR research currently being done at the ALS.