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The beamline

The part of LIX CORA models today, as areas you can jump to: the undulator-and-monochromator spine, the solution and scanning sample with its fluidic delivery, and the detectors, plus the controls. First cut.

LIX (Life Science X-ray scattering) is the NSLS-II life-science scattering beamline at sector 16-ID. It resolves the structure of biological macromolecules in solution by small- and wide-angle X-ray scattering (bio-SAXS / WAXS), including in-line size-exclusion chromatography (SEC-SAXS), and maps cells and tissue with a scanning microbeam. Its PV zones run XF:16IDA, the optics hutch (lix-optics) that carries the monochromator, the white-beam and KB mirrors, the mono slit and the photon shutter; XF:16IDB, the transport zone (the secondary-source aperture, the fast shutter, the upstream beam-position monitor); and XF:16IDC, the endstation (lix-endstation) where the conditioned beam meets a solution flow cell or a tissue sample and the pattern is recorded on the Pilatus detectors (ENC-1). 16-ID is an in-vacuum-undulator source, so there is an insertion device on the spine, unlike the bending-magnet CMS (SRC-1).

Along the beam, in order, sit the stations: the Source that delivers, conditions, focuses, and energy-selects the incident beam, the Sample that places the specimen, by flow cell or on a scanning stage, at a chosen position, and the Detector that records the scattered 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 storage-ring machine state read through a loose StorageRing (MACHINE-1), the in-vacuum undulator (SRC-1), the double-crystal monochromator (MONO-1), the white-beam and KB focusing mirrors (OPT-1), the mono slit and secondary-source aperture (OPT-2), the photon and fast shutters (PSS-1, TRIG-1), and in the endstation zone the compound refractive lens transfocator (CRL-1) and the guard slit (OPT-2). The incident energy is a pseudo-axis over the DCM Bragg angle and the undulator gap (MONO-1).
  • Sample: the solution positioning stack (a Manipulator, SAMPLE-1) that places the flow cell; the scanning-microbeam goniometer (a Goniometer, SCAN-1) for cells and tissue; and the HPLC delivery pump (a loose FlowController, FLUID-1) that flows the solution and SEC peak through the cell. The selector valves, the SEC column, the flow cell, the sample robot, and the solution Subject are the fluidic-delivery seam and the Subject / Supply / Procedure shape (FLUID-1, SEC-1, ROBOT-1, SUBJECT-1).
  • Detector: the SAXS and WAXS Pilatus area detectors (DET-1), the scanning-mode fluorescence spectrometer (DET-1), the detector translations (DET-1), the SAXS beamstop (DET-1), and the endstation flux and beam-position monitors (DET-1, DIAG-1). The Zebra triggers the detectors (TRIG-1).

Shared

  • Controls: the NSLS-II EPICS / ophyd control stack, the heterogeneous fluidic control plane (a Moxa terminal server, the Agilent OpenLAB .NET SDK, a pcaspy soft-IOC), 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 SAXS flight path), plus the bio-SAXS consumables (buffers, the SEC column, needle wash) as Supply; carried in the descriptor (SUP-1, SEC-1).

Reference

  • Inventory: the full planned CORA Asset model (every device by parent_id, with Families and pending confirmations), including the loose families and the FlowController held at n=3.