Study of SR beam focusing with X-ray compound refractive lenses at the VEPP-3 storage ring

X-ray compound refractive lenses (CRLs) are successfully applied in many experiments with synchrotron radiation, especially, at the third generation SR sources. At the same time, advantages of CRL employment at SR sources of previous generations with larger source sizes are not so obvious, and it seems to be useful to reveal the conditions and the experiments in which application of CRLs could be effective. With this purpose, first study of SR beam focusing by plastic planar lenses with a parabolic profile in the photon energy range from 10.4 to 14 keV was carried out at the VEPP-3 storage ring. Three different experimental techniques were applied to measure intensity distribution in the focal line. The measured focused beam line was 17–18 μm and the real gain in intensity was about 7. The obtained values differ from the expected calculated ones by a factor of about 2. The possible reasons of this discrepancy and potential employment of CRLs in real SR experiments at the VEPP-3 are discussed.