A soft x-ray beamline capable of canceling the performance impairment due to power absorbed on its optical elements.

We present an entrance slitless beamline design capable of maintaining its very high performance in terms of energy resolution (>10(4)) and spot size (4x4 microm2) at the sample position despite being exposed to more than 2.15 kW of undulator radiation and a maximum power density on the optics of more than 0.9 W/mm2. Ray tracing simulations of this beamline under the worst-case thermal deformations of the optical element surfaces verify that appropriate focusing corrections are able to cancel the deleterious effects of these deformations. One of the necessary conditions for this cancellation is to illuminate the optical elements with a larger solid angle than the undulator's central cone, which contains the usable photons but is considerably smaller than the angular power distribution.