Measurement of the absolute number of photons of the hard X-ray beamline at the Linac Coherent Light Source

X-ray free-electron lasers provide intense pulses of coherent X-rays with a short pulse duration. These sources are chaotic by nature and therefore, to be used at their full potential, require that every X-ray pulse is characterized in terms of various relevant properties such as intensity, photon energy, position and timing. Diagnostics are for example installed on an X-ray beamline to specifically monitor the intensity of individual X-ray pulses. To date, these can however only provide a single-shot value of the relative number of photons per shot. Here are reported measurements made in January 2015 of the absolute number of photons in the hard X-ray regime at LCLS which is typically 3.5 × 10(11) photons shot(−1) between 6 and 9.5 keV at the X-ray Pump–Probe instrument. Moreover, an average transmission of ≈62% of the hard X-ray beamline over this energy range is measured and the third-harmonic content of ≈0.47% below 9 keV is characterized.