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The beamline

The part of i06 CORA models today, as areas you can jump to: a shared soft X-ray spine and its two endstations, the sample and detector sides of each, plus the controls and the resources they draw on. Reverse-engineered scaffold.

i06 is the Diamond Light Source nanoscience soft X-ray beamline at Sector 06, and it is shaped differently from the single-line deployments around it. One spine, the plane-grating monochromator fed by a twin APPLE-II undulator source, conditions and energy-selects the beam and then splits it to two endstations: i06-1 for diffraction and dichroism, and i06-2 for photoemission electron microscopy (PEEM). The whole spine, the source, and the two stations form one CORA Asset tree under the root Unit I06.

i06 is also a beamline of firsts for CORA. It is the first whose source is an APPLE-II undulator, so it is the first that drives the X-ray polarization as an experiment axis alongside the incident-energy axis, which is what magnetic dichroism needs. And i06-2 is CORA's first PEEM endstation, an electron-imaging technique distinct from the electron-energy analysis of ARPES.

Three access-gated enclosures contain it: a shared i06-optics zone (BL06I), the i06-1 diffraction-dichroism endstation (BL06J), and the i06-2 PEEM endstation (BL06K) (ENC-1). The PV zones follow that split: BL06I carries the optics spine (the PGM, the APPLE-II controllers, the i06-branch PEEM stage), SR06I carries the APPLE-II servo crates (SERVC-01 / SERVC-21), BL06J carries i06-1, and BL06K carries i06-2.

Along and across the beam sit two kinds of thing. In beam order are the stations: the Source that delivers, conditions, energy-selects, and now polarizes the beam, the Sample side of each endstation, and the Detector side of each. Cutting across them are the Controls and the resources the beamline draws on. The stations are containment trees of apparatus (Asset.parent_id); controls relate to that apparatus sideways, by controller_id, and a resource is a Supply in its own right.

Stations

  • Source: the shared optics spine. The storage ring as observed machine state, the twin APPLE-II undulators (the downstream IDD and the upstream IDU), the soft X-ray plane-grating monochromator, and the two driven beam axes: the incident-energy pseudo-axis (70-2200 eV) over the PGM and the APPLE-II gap (MONO-1), and the fleet-first polarization pseudo-axis over the APPLE-II phase rows, with the value domain LH / LV / PC / NC / LA plus third-harmonic variants (POL-1, POL-2). The source walk is the generated page; it traces each device.
  • Sample: the sample side of both endstations. For i06-1, the diffractometer (sample circles plus the detector arm), the XAS / absorption stage carried as a design-phase placeholder (STAGE-1), and the two Lakeshore 336 temperature controllers (TEMP-1). For i06-2, the UHV PEEM sample manipulators (MANIP-1).
  • Detector: the detector side of both endstations. For i06-1, the reciprocal-space axis over the diffractometer circles (DIFF-2) and the detector arm. The i06-1 diffraction scattering detector and any incident-flux or drain-current (electron-yield) monitor are absent from dodal and are deferred, not invented (DET-1). For i06-2, the PEEM electron-optical column and its magnified electron-image detector are likewise absent from dodal and deferred (PEEM-1).

Shared

  • Controls: the Diamond EPICS / ophyd-async control stack, the same floor as I22, I03, I15-1, I11, and I24, with the real dodal PV handles carried confirm (CTRL-1). CORA observes the floor and, where it replaces bluesky-style orchestration, conducts over it; it does not replace EPICS.
  • Resources: the continuously-available supplies a run needs (photon beam, cooling water, and UHV vacuum for the optics path and the endstation chambers); carried in the descriptor, with no operations page in this scaffold (SUP-1).

Reference

The cross-cutting view that spans every area:

  • Inventory: the full planned CORA Asset model (every device by parent_id, with Families, the dodal control handles, and pending confirmations). i06 earns no new Family: the APPLE-II reuses InsertionDevice (the same source-undulator anatomy as the EPUs at SIX, CSX, and ESM), polarization reuses PseudoAxis as a sibling of the incident-energy axis, and the PEEM manipulators reuse Manipulator. The PSS search-and-secure permit signals and the photon and front-end shutters are absent from dodal and carried pending, not invented (PSS-1).