Development of coherent scattering and diffractive imaging and the COSMIC facility at the Advanced Light Source

A new facility is described that is being constructed for coherent scattering and microscopy at the Advanced Light Source. The undulator beamline delivers maximum coherent flux to two experiment programs. One is for soft x-ray coherent scattering and correlation studies, the other is for soft x-ray diffractive imaging using ptychographic reconstruction techniques. The energy resolution is sufficient for NEXAFS spectroscopy with full polarization control, from below the carbon edge to 2500eV. New instrumentation is planned for wavelength limited 2D imaging and 3D imaging at spatial resolution better than 10nm and for coherent scattering studies with a variety of sample environments including strong magnetic fields and cryogenic temperatures. High speed CCD detectors will make optimum use of the available flux on dedicated data transmission networks.