Probing the transverse coherence of an undulator X-ray beam using Brownian particles

We present a novel method to map the two-dimensional transverse coherence of an x-ray beam using the dynamical near-field speckles formed by scattering from colloidal particles. Owing to the statistical nature of the method, the coherence properties of synchrotron radiation from an undulator source is obtained with high accuracy. The two-dimensional complex coherence function is determined at the sample position and the imaging optical scheme further allowed us to evaluate the coherence factor at the undulator output despite the aberrations introduced by the focusing optics.