Development of a hard X-ray delay line for X-ray photon correlation spectroscopy and jitter-free pump–probe experiments at X-ray free-electron laser sources

A hard X-ray delay line capable of splitting and delaying single X-ray pulses has been developed with the aim of performing X-ray photon correlation spectroscopy (XPCS) and X-ray pump–probe experiments at hard X-ray free-electron laser sources. The performance of the device was tested with 8.39 keV synchrotron radiation. Time delays up to 2.95 ns have been demonstrated. The feasibility of the device for performing XPCS studies was tested by recording static speckle patterns. The achieved speckle contrast of 56% indicates the possibility of performing ultra-fast XPCS studies with the delay line.