X‐ray tracing study of crystal spectrometers for WDXRS application

Construction of a high energy resolution crystal X-ray spectrometer to be used for wavelength-dispersive X-ray emission spectroscopy (WDXRS) may result in different geometrical aberrations, such as systematic X-ray line shifts and changes of the X-ray line shape. Most of these aberrations can be reduced by careful design of a crystal spectrometer, keeping the efficiency of the spectrometer as high as possible. The availability of high-resolution position-sensitive detectors and small excitation beam sizes, and therefore a possible downsized Wavelength-dispersive X-ray (WDX) spectrometer, increase the need for reliable simulation of aberrations involved in WDXRS. Since the experimental investigation of the impact that WDX spectrometer design has on a particular aberration is rather time-consuming, a numerical X-ray tracing procedure, XTRACE, has been developed and applied for this purpose. Results are given in the form of virtual X-ray energy spectra that have been affected by the most important aberrations.