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The beamline

The part of CMS CORA models today, as areas you can jump to: the source and monochromator spine, the scattering and reflectivity sample, and the detectors, plus the controls. First cut.

CMS (Complex Materials Scattering) is the NSLS-II soft-matter and thin-film scattering beamline at sector 11-BM, and the direct NSLS-II twin of SMI (12-ID). It resolves structure by small-, wide-, and medium-angle scattering (SAXS / WAXS / MAXS), grazing-incidence scattering (GISAXS / GIWAXS), and specular X-ray reflectivity (XR). Its PV zones run XF:11BMA, the first optics enclosure (cms-optics) that carries the monochromator, the mirrors, the FOE slit and the FOE flux monitor, and XF:11BMB, the endstation (cms-endstation) where the conditioned beam meets a film, interface, or solution sample and the pattern is recorded on the area detectors (ENC-1). The newer mirror sits on its own zone, XF:11BM1. 11-BM is a bending-magnet source, the 2-BM / 7-BM pattern, so there is no undulator or insertion device on the spine (SRC-1).

Along the beam, in order, sit the stations: the Source that delivers, conditions, and energy-selects the incident beam, the Sample that places the specimen at a chosen position and angle, and the Detector that records the scattered and reflected signal. Cutting across them are the Controls. The stations are containment trees of apparatus (Asset.parent_id); controls relate to it sideways, by controller_id.

Stations

  • Source: the bending-magnet machine state read through a loose StorageRing (SRC-1, MACHINE-1), the double-multilayer monochromator (the DMM, a multilayer Bragg optic, calibrated near 13.5 keV, MONO-1), the toroidal and elliptical mirrors (OPT-1), the FOE slit (OPT-2) and the eight pneumatic attenuator foils (ATTN-1), and the FOE flux monitor (DET-1). The incident energy is a pseudo-axis over the DMM Bragg angle (MONO-1).
  • Sample: the sample goniometer, whose sth axis is both the grazing-incidence and the specular-reflectivity angle (SAMPLE-1); the surface-leveling tilt stage for thin films (SAMPLE-1); the GIBar sample-exchange arm, a multi-axis sample-bar loader modelled by its stage axes (ROBOT-1); and the Linkam thermal / tensile stage (TEMP-1).
  • Detector: the SAXS, WAXS, and MAXS Pilatus area detectors (DET-1), the SAXS beamstop (DET-1), and the endstation flux and beam-position monitors (DET-1, DIAG-1). Specular reflectivity (XR) is read on the fixed SAXS detector over a sliding region as the sample angle is stepped, not on a separate detector arm (XR-1).

Shared

  • Controls: the NSLS-II EPICS / ophyd control stack, the same floor as FXI, HXN, SRX, BMM, SIX, CHX, ESM, and SMI, and the bluesky-plan orchestration CORA's edge replaces. The device handles are bound from the beamline's profile collection and carried confirm (CTRL-1).
  • Resources: the continuously-available supplies a run needs (the photon beam, cooling water, and vacuum for the optics and the endstation flight path); carried in the descriptor (SUP-1).

Reference

  • Inventory: the full planned CORA Asset model (every device by parent_id, with Families and pending confirmations), including the one loose family held at n=1.