TAO –
Thin Adaptive Optics for synchrotron x-rays

With the advent of diffraction-limited storage ring, many beamlines around the world will produce coherent x-rays, opening the door to wavefront correction and wavefront engineering. While new ALS-U beamlines will all feature adaptive optics, the current x-ray adaptive optics are bulky, expensive (~$300k), require high voltages to operate (500 V), are relatively slow (1Hz) and show drift and hysteressis

We are developping x-ray adaptive optics based on thin-film PZT deposited on a silicon wafer substrate to bring it to coherent synchotron beamline endstations. Those optics can be produce in large quantities (~6 per wafer), can have a much large number of actuators (>100), operate at higher speed (10kHz) while requiring only 10 V actuation, malking them much more suitable for UHV integration. 

We are collaborating with Pennsylvania State University (Susan Trolier-McKinstry and Tom Jackson) and the University of Iowa (Casey DeRoo), borrowing technical developments by NASA for space x-ray telescope. Their optical specifications are however much looser than what is required by x-ray telescopes (sloppe error of 1arcsec-rms –5urad-rms – vs. 300 nm-rms) and we need to mature the technology, leveraging ion-beam figuring and machine learning  to make them suitable for diffraction-limited performance. 

Resources

• Development of x-ray adaptive optics at the Advanced Light Source (presentation, April 2026)

• github repository: https://github.com/dream-beam/TAO

• (private) Machine learning for x-ray adaptive optics:  https://github.com/dream-beam/adaptiveXrayOptics-gg

Selected dream work:

Development of thin deformable x-ray mirrors for synchrotron applications
Xiaoya Chong, Kenneth M. Buffo, Philip Griffin, Pannawit Tipsawat, Casey DeRoo, Susan Trolier-McKinstry, Bryan Ochoa, Diane Bryant, Morgan Ericksen, Ali Sabbah, Nicolás Smith, Ian Lacey, Valeriy Yashchuk, Kenneth A. Goldberg, Antoine Islegen-Wojdyla
Proceedings Volume 13620, Advances in X-Ray/EUV Sources, Optics, and Components XX; 136200D (2025)
doi.org/10.1117/12.3065469 – Submitted DRAFT (pdf)

Metrology of thin adaptive optics for x-ray beamlines
Kenneth Buffo, Casey DeRoo, Philip Griffin, Antoine Islegen-Wojdyla, Xiaoya Chong, Kenneth Goldberg, Bryan Ochoa, Susan Trolier-McKinstry, Pannawit Tipsawat
Proceedings Volume 13620, Advances in X-Ray/EUV Sources, Optics, and Components XX; 136200M (2025)
doi.org/10.1117/12.3063585 –  Submitted DRAFT (pdf)

Data-driven modeling and control of an X-ray bimorph adaptive mirror
G. Gunjala, A. Wojdyla, K. A. Goldberg, Z. Qiao, X. Shi, L. Assoufid and L. Waller;
J. Synchrotron Rad. (2023). 30, 57-64 https://doi.org/10.1107/S1600577522011080

Real-time machine-learning-driven control system of a deformable mirror for achieving aberration-free X-ray wavefronts
L. Rebuffi, X. Shi, Z. Qiao, M. J. Highland, M.G. Frith, A. Wojdyla, K. A. Goldberg, and L. Assoufid
Optics Express 31,  13 (2023)  https://doi.org/10.1364/OE.488189