Coherent Small-Angle Scattering on a Bending-Magnet Beamline at the ESRF

A coherent X-ray beam is obtained from the D2AM bending-magnet beamline (BM2) of the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility. As this line has permanent convergent optics, monochromated by an Si(111) double monochromator, coherence conditions are satisfied by selecting a part of the beam close to the focal point. Low intensity (10⁶ X-rays s^-1) is partially compensated by a high degree of coherence and by the use of a high-resolution direct-illumination CCD area detector. The stability of the small-angle set-up makes quantitative analysis possible. The calculated and measured degrees of coherence are compared. The distributions of speckle intensities are explained by a beam composed of two-thirds coherent and one-third incoherent parts. This incoherent component is caused by Kapton windows, which will be removed in future experiments.