The shadow monochromatic backlighting (SMB) scheme, a modification
of the well-known soft X-ray monochromatic backlighting scheme,
is proposed. It is based on a spherical crystal as the dispersive
element and extends the traditional scheme by allowing one to
work with a wide range of Bragg angles and thus in a wide spectral
range. The advantages of the new scheme are demonstrated
experimentally and supported numerically by ray-tracing
simulations. In the experiments, the X-ray backlighter source
is a laser-produced plasma, created by the interaction of an
ultrashort pulse, Ti:Sapphire laser (120 fs, 3–5 mJ,
1016 W/cm2 on target) or a short wavelength
XeCl laser (10 ns, 1–2 J, 1013 W/cm2 on
target) with various solid targets (Dy, Ni + Cr, BaF2).
In both experiments, the X-ray sources are well localized spatially
(∼20 μm) and are spectrally tunable in a relatively wide
wavelength range (λ = 8–15 Å). High quality monochromatic
(δλ/λ ∼ 10−5–10−3)
images with high spatial resolution (up to ∼4 μm) over a large field
of view (a few square millimeters) were obtained. Utilization
of spherically bent crystals to obtain high-resolution, large
field, monochromatic images in a wide range of Bragg angles
(35° < Θ < 90°) is demonstrated for the first
time.
The gas pixel detector as an x-ray photoelectric polarimeter with a large field of view