Development of new detection techniques for Resonant Inelastic X ray Scattering

RIXS is an important spectroscopic technique that is used to probe the electronic structure of materials with the main limiting factor on RIXS beamlines being the spatial resolution of the detector. Using EMCCDs in combination with centroiding can achieve a spatial resolution of < 5 µm however this method has various limitations which are investigated in this thesis. EMCCDs during operation on a RIXS beamline are subjected to X-ray radiation over many years, therefore the first part of this thesis investigates the effect of soft X-ray radiation damage on dark current generation in EMCCDs. The key result is that under experimental conditions there will be no effect on the resolution of RIXS beamlines due to increased dark current from radiation damage. If two X-rays interact close to each other then they cannot be centroided, which is known as pileup. The second part of this thesis investigates the effect of X-ray pileup on the resolution of RIXS spectra. Initial results suggest that centroiding does not improve the resolution, however other limiting factors mean that the true performance cannot be obtained. As a result, an experimental system used to demonstrate the true resolution achievable has been designed. The first key result from this system is that EMCCDs when used with centroiding can achieve a resolution of < 5 µm when the other limiting factors are minimised. The second key result is that a trade-off has been made between throughput and resolution when incorporating rejected events due to pileup back into a RIXS spectrum which can lead to significant improvements to the resolution achievable with a minimal effect on the throughput.