Performance of a novel VUV bending magnet beamline

A novel high resolution, high flux bending magnet beamline with an energy range from 5 to 40 eV has been constructed at SRRC. This Dragon-like beamline, which horizontally collects 50 mrad of synchrotron radiation from a bending magnet source, uses four cylindrical gratings with an included angle of 140 degrees and a movable curved exit slit. The average photon flux with an energy resolving power of 1000 is about 2 x 10(12) photons/s, which is among the highest of all existing VUV bending magnet beamlines. An energy resolving power of 24 000 at 6.8 eV has been obtained from the Schumann-Runge bands (B-3 Sigma (-)(u) <-- X-3 (-)(g)) absorption spectra of O-2 gas. A photon flux of 3 x 10(9) photons/s is measured at the energy resolving power of 24 000. This high flux bending magnet beamline offers excellent opportunities for VUV experiments with a wide range spectrum. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.