The optical design of a novel spectrometer is presented, combining a cylindrically convex pre-mirror with a cylindrically concave varied-line-spacing grating (both in the meridional) to deliver a resolving power of 100000-200000 in the `water window' (2-5 nm). Most remarkably, the extremely high spectral resolution is achieved for an effective meridional source size of 50 µm (r.m.s.); this property could potentially be applied to diagnose SASE-FEL and well resolve individual single spikes in its radiation spectrum. The overall optical aberrations of the system are well analysed and compensated, providing an excellent flat-field at the detector domain throughout the whole spectral range. Also, a machine-learning scheme - SVM - is introduced to explore and reconstruct the optimal system with high efficiency.
Keywords: X-ray optics; diffraction principle; geometric optics; optical aberration analysis and optimization; ray tracing; resolution enhancement; spectrometer.
open access.