Study of a scattering shield in a high heat load monochromator

The techniques for the cooling of the first crystal of a monochromator are by now mature and are used routinely to deal with the heat loads resulting from the intense beams generated by third generation synchrotron insertion device sources. However, the thermal stability of said monochromators, which crucially depends on proper shielding of X-ray scattering off the first crystal, remains a serious consideration. This will become even more so in the near future, as many synchrotron facilities are upgrading to higher beam currents and energies. During a recent upgrade of the 17-ID beamline at the APS it was recognized that accurate simulation of the spatial distribution of the power scattered off the first crystal was essential for the understanding and remediation of the observed large temperature increase of the first crystal's scattering shield. The calculation is complex, due to the broad energy spectrum of the undulator and the prevalence of multiple X-ray scattering events within the bulk of the crystal, thus the Monte Carlo method is the natural tool for such a task. A successful simulation was developed, for the purpose of the 17-ID upgrade, and used to significantly improve the design of the first crystal's scattering shield.