Prospects of ultrafast x-ray absorption investigations using laboratory based sources

Ultrafast X-ray absorption spectroscopy (UXAS) offers the opportunity to investigate function-structure relationships of complex organic molecules or biological functional subunits without the need of crystallization. Of special interest from the viewpoint of structural biology is the region of K-edges of transition metals between 5 and 10 keV. Regardless of successful application of time-resolved diffraction techniques to investigations of crystal dynamics using synchrotron and laboratory based sources there are only very few examples for application of UXAS to revealing the structural dynamics in biomolecular systems. This is mainly caused by the lack of broadband ultrafast x-ray sources as well as of appropriate optics adapted to these sources. Due to the long-data-recording time in UXAS experiments the sample integrity is mainly determined by the average power of the pump pulses inducing the structural changes. Using a fixed energy of the pump pulse the latter one is determined by the repetition rate of the pump laser. In this paper we discuss the prospects of UXAS comparing fs laser plasma sources with different repetition rates in combination with tailor-made optics based on highly annealed pyrolytic graphite (HAPG).