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HXN

Scanning hard X-ray nanoprobe at NSLS-II, beamline 3-ID: nano-XRF mapping, ptychography, nano-tomography, and spectro-tomography. This page describes how CORA would model and run HXN; the model is reverse-engineered from public configuration, not yet confirmed by HXN staff.

Property Value
Asset HXN (root Asset, tier = Unit, parent_id = None)
Facility NSLS-II (bound via facility_code = "nsls2", FacilityKind = Site)
Sector Sector 3 (PV namespace XF:03ID*)
Institution Brookhaven National Laboratory (context; not modeled as an Asset or Facility)
Status Reverse-engineered from public config (design-phase scaffold)
Source IVU20 in-vacuum undulator (SR:C3-ID:G1{IVU20:1})

How CORA would land on HXN

These pages describe how CORA would model, govern, and conduct HXN, the second NSLS-II beamline after FXI. They are not a survey of the beamline's current software. The hardware facts (devices, EPICS PVs, axes, enclosures) are read from public NSLS-II open source (the NSLS2/hxn-profile-collection profile collection) and verified against it; vendor part numbers, controller models, and physical positions are not in it, so they, and every read value, are carried confirm until HXN staff verify them (Open questions). This is a design-phase scaffold: the descriptor and these docs, with scenarios deferred.

The defining shape: a scanning probe

Where FXI is a full-field microscope (flood the sample, image the whole field at once), HXN is a scanning probe: a zone plate or a multilayer Laue lens focuses the beam to a nano-spot, the sample is rastered through that spot, and several detectors are read at every dwell point, a fluorescence spectrometer for element maps, a pixel detector for ptychography, and flux counters for normalization. The sample position axes are the scan. This is the new shape HXN brings to CORA, distinct from every prior full-field or single-shot deployment.

The beamline

Along the beam, in order:

  • Source: the in-vacuum undulator and the optics hutch (3-ID-A), rendered as the generated source-stage device walk: the double-crystal monochromator, three mirrors, and the white-beam slits.
  • Sample: the two focusing optics (zone plate, multilayer Laue lens), their order-sorting apertures and beam stops, and the nano-positioning sample stack rastered through the focus.
  • Detector: the per-point detectors read together during a scan (fluorescence spectrometer, pixel detectors, flux counters).

Cutting across all three:

  • Controls: the Zebra position-capture trigger and the motion controllers (Power PMAC, Attocube ANC350), which HXN exposes in source.

The cross-cutting reference view is the Inventory: the flat Asset tree by parent_id with families, PVs, and the values still pending confirmation.

Techniques

Techniques: what HXN would run, each a Catalog Method bound through an NSLS-II Practice. The scanning and ptychography Capabilities are deliberately not coined yet (see the page).

Governance

Governance: who may act at HXN and the trust shape CORA applies. People and agents are facility principals at the NSLS-II Site; CORA brings its own per-Actor authority.

Model

Model: the developer's by-kind index into where each CORA aggregate's HXN content lives.