Robert Feidenhans´l, the Managing Director of European XFEL, Schenefeld Germany is our next guest of the Wigner Colloquia. The title of his lecture is: “European XFEL : The strongest X-ray beam in the world“.
Wigner Colloquia is a highlighted seminar series of the Wigner Research Centre for Physics. Invited speakers are the most excellent researchers from different areas of physics. The goal of the program is to give first-hand knowledge to our colleagues and the interested professional public from well-known scientists from all over the world.
European XFEL : The strongest X-ray beam in the world
Abstract:
Hard X-ray Free Electron (XFEL) lasers provide extremely intense and ultra-short X-ray pulses that are ideal to investigate structure and dynamics of matter at atomic time scales. X-ray free electron lasers have been in operation for more than 10 years now and have shown to have a wide range of areas of applications in physics, chemistry, materials and structural biology.
European XFEL is one of the most recent large-scale research infrastructures in Europe and has just celebrated 5 years of successful user operation. The facility includes a 3.5 km long tunnel with a 2 km long superconducting accelerator from DESY in Hamburg/Bahrenfeld to Schenefeld in Schleswig-Holstein where the experimental hall with 7 experimental instruments is placed. The instruments offer a wide range of experimental capabilities. Since the start of operation, exciting user experiments have been conducted within physics, chemistry, bio crystallography and material science.
In my talk I will present the main principles of the science that can be performed, how experiments are different from synchrotron radiation experiments and how they are similar. Examples will be given from recent experiments from European XFEL in various areas of science.
