X-ray attenuation cell

To minimize the pulse-to-pulse variation, the LCLS FEL must operate at saturation, i.e. 10 orders of magnitude brighter spectral brilliance than 3-generation light sources. At this intensity, ultra-high vacuums and windowless transport are required. Many of the experiments, however, will need to be conducted at a much lower intensity thereby requiring a reliable means to reduce the x-ray intensity by many orders of magnitude without increasing the pulse-to-pulse variation. In this report we consider a possible solution for controlled attenuation of the LCLS x-ray radiation. We suggest using for this purpose a windowless gas-filled cell with the differential pumping. Although this scheme is easily realizable in principle, it has to be demonstrated that the attenuator can be made short enough to be practical and that the gas loads delivered to the vacuum line of sight (LOS) are acceptable. We are not going to present a final, optimized design. Instead, we will provide a preliminary analysis showing that the whole concept is robust and is worth further study.