Coherence at ESRF-EBS, Grenoble – France 9 – 13 September 2019

The imminent completion of the Extremely Brilliant Source (EBS) upgrade will usher in a new era with coherent X-rays at the ESRF. Coherent X-ray scattering techniques such as coherent diffraction imaging of isolated specimens (CDI), holography, ptychography and photon correlation spectroscopy (XPCS), which have seen rapid development recently, have demonstrated their potential across several domains, from biosciences to materials sciences in either transmission or Bragg geometries. A suite of beamlines have been developed in anticipation to deliver a broad range of coherence based techniques to the user community at the ESRF-EBS. CDI, ptychography, holography will also dramatically increase their capabilities towards higher spatial and temporal resolution. The high coherent flux will allow tomographic reconstructions with unprecedented spatial resolution down to 5 nm and below, and tracking slow (minutes) temporal structural transformations at the nanoscale. Such gains promise also access to resonant edges and higher energies for buried and radiation sensitive samples. In addition the ESRF council has approved the construction of a 200m long new beamline (EBSL1) that will revolutionize XPCS and coherent X-ray scattering for dynamical and structural studies in soft and hard-condensed systems. The new instrument will pave the way to new groundbreaking experiments, probing dynamical phenomena from hundreds of nanoseconds to thousands of seconds at both the nanometric and atomic level. The workshop aims to:

clarify the current state of the field at ESRF for its users, be it native state, in situ, operando or time-resolved
identify opportunities created by coherent x-rays when applied to real world systems and the challenges posed
drive the directions for development of existing beamlines
provide critical feedback from the user community for the design of the EBSL1 beamline