Focus on this: Japanese team increases X-ray laser focusing ability

Osaka University-based researchers fabricated multilayer mirrors that improved the focusing of X-ray free-electron laser (XFEL) beams. The wavefront of an XFEL beam focused by the fabricated multilayer mirrors was measured and then the shape of the mirrors was corrected to improve the beam focus to less than ten nanometers. The developed focusing mirrors will expand the applications of XFELs in fields such as X-ray nonlinear optics and protein crystallography.