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Techniques

What Cristallina is designed to do, as design intent. Design-phase: these are Methods CORA would earn, not Methods it has.

Cristallina runs two technique families, neither of which fits the catalog's tomography Methods, so each is carried pending on the PSI Practices until it is earned. They are listed here as design intent, with the shape each would take over the spine and the gap each leans on.

Time-resolved hard X-ray diffraction and scattering (quantum materials)

Cristallina's reason for existing. The Cristallina-Q endstation studies quantum materials: their structural and electronic response is read by diffraction and scattering, shot by shot, in a controlled low-temperature, high-magnetic-field environment. The sample is oriented and the detector positioned by the DM1 dilution-fridge or DM2 pulsed-magnet diffractometer, inside the DilSc dilution refrigerator and its vector superconducting magnet.

  • Spine shape: a diffraction Method binding the diffractometer (a Goniometer for the sample circles, a RotaryStage 2-theta detector arm, and a reciprocal-space PseudoAxis), composed through the graduated Diffractometer Assembly (DIFF-1), over a per-shot acquisition, with the sample-environment state (temperature from the LakeShore 372, field from the vector magnet) as conditions. It shares the diffraction Method Bernina introduced.
  • Gap it leans on: the per-shot, pulse-ID-tagged event DAQ (DAQ-1). A time-resolved diffraction run is a free-running shot stream tagged by pulse-ID, not a trajectory of points. The diffractometer is covered by the existing Assembly, and the sample environment by the TemperatureController Family and the graduated Magnet Family; the acquisition is the gap.

The vector magnet is what distinguishes Cristallina-Q from Bernina's diffraction: the experiment sweeps not just delay and orientation but a three-axis magnetic field, in a dilution-fridge temperature regime. That sample environment is modelled (the LakeShore as TemperatureController, the magnet as the graduated Magnet Family, a further consumer, MAG-1) and gated by a Clearance hazard, but it adds no new technique-modelling shape beyond the conditions a Run already carries.

Serial femtosecond crystallography

The Cristallina-MX endstation runs serial crystallography: microcrystals are delivered onto the fast XY sample stage and each X-ray pulse records a single-shot diffraction pattern. It shares the serial_crystallography Method LCLS-MFX and Alvra carry.

  • Spine shape: a serial_crystallography Method binding the fast sample stage, the focusing optics, and the 8M Jungfrau, over a free-running per-shot acquisition.
  • Gap it leans on: the per-shot, pulse-ID-tagged event DAQ (DAQ-1), the same as for the other XFEL serial-crystallography exercises. The sample delivery beyond the fast stage is endstation-specific and deferred (SAMPLE-1).

Why neither is in the catalog yet

The catalog's Methods are all tomography-family. An XFEL diffraction / crystallography station shares none of them, and coining XFEL Methods now, before the per-shot acquisition axis they depend on exists (DAQ-1), would be inventing recipes for a spine that cannot yet run them. So each is carried pending, reusing the Method name Bernina or LCLS-MFX named for it. That a third PSI station, on a different controls library (slic) and with a novel sample environment (the vector magnet), reaches the same acquisition gaps is the reinforcement Cristallina adds: the gaps are about the XFEL acquisition paradigm, not the technique or the controls house style. See Model for the gap register, the Diffractometer Assembly design, and the Magnet rule-of-three.