Develop a perfect spectrometer in water window

Abstract

We report a novelly universal scheme for design of a grazing incidence spectrometer, which creates an excellent meridional flat field in its detector domain to deliver the desired spectral resolution throughout the full designated spectral range, while eliminates the sagittal astigmatism to enhance the spectral intensity simultaneously. The intrinsic optical properties of the system are thoroughly investigated and optimized, especially how the detector plane approaches to the actual meridional or sagittal focal curves is well quantified. We demonstrated within the "water window", i.e. 2-5nm wavelength range, the resolving power of 6000-18000 could be achieved for the effective meridional source size of 200um r.m.s.; and it would be further improved to 20000-40000 if the source size is confined down to 50um r.m.s.