A superconducting wavelength shifter as primary radiometric source standard in the X-ray range

For more than 20 years, the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) has been using the calculable radiation of bending magnets from the BESSY I and BESSY II electron storage rings in the visible, UV, vacuum-UV (VUV) and X-ray spectral range for radiometry, especially for the calibration of radiation sources and energy-dispersive detectors. Due to its—compared to bending magnets—higher magnetic field, wavelength shifters (WLS) have the potential to extend the usable spectral range for these applications to higher photon energies. Thus, the characteristic energies of BESSY II bending magnet radiation and a 6 T WLS radiation are 2.5 and 11.5 keV, respectively. Within the scope of this work, the properties of the synchrotron radiation from the 6 T WLS have been investigated and compared to theoretical predictions for photon energies up to 150 keV. Good agreement within the experimental uncertainty of several percent was found. Further improvements for a future radiometric use of WLS radiation with low uncertainties will be discussed.