Photon Beam Transport and Scientific Instruments at the European XFEL

TLDR

European XFEL is a free‑electron laser facility that delivers high‑average‑brilliance, femtosecond, highly coherent soft and hard X‑ray pulses to six scientific instruments. Its goal is to enable diverse scientific experiments—spanning physics, chemistry, geosciences, materials science, and biology—by providing users with unprecedented X‑ray brilliance starting in 2017. High brilliance is achieved by accelerating up to 27,000 electron bunches per second in a superconducting accelerator, and the resulting radiation from three FEL sources is distributed via long beam‑transport lines to the experiment hall, where optimized instruments and diagnostics preserve the beam’s properties. The beam‑transport systems have been optimized to maintain the FEL’s unique pulse characteristics and will be monitored with built‑in photon diagnostics.

Abstract

European XFEL is a free-electron laser (FEL) user facility providing soft and hard X-ray FEL radiation to initially six scientific instruments. Starting user operation in fall 2017 European XFEL will provide new research opportunities to users from science domains as diverse as physics, chemistry, geo- and planetary sciences, materials sciences or biology. The unique feature of European XFEL is the provision of high average brilliance in the soft and hard X-ray regime, combined with the pulse properties of FEL radiation of extreme peak intensities, femtosecond pulse duration and high degree of coherence. The high average brilliance is achieved through acceleration of up to 27,000 electron bunches per second by the super-conducting electron accelerator. Enabling the usage of this high average brilliance in user experiments is one of the major instrumentation drivers for European XFEL. The radiation generated by three FEL sources is distributed via long beam transport systems to the experiment hall where the scientific instruments are located side-by-side. The X-ray beam transport systems have been optimized to maintain the unique features of the FEL radiation which will be monitored using build-in photon diagnostics. The six scientific instruments are optimized for specific applications using soft or hard X-ray techniques and include integrated lasers, dedicated sample environment, large area high frame rate detector(s) and computing systems capable of processing large quantities of data.