First seeding at FLASH (May 2012)
There is a worldwide search of methods for initiating the process of producing laser light in free-electron lasers (FEL) with a well-defined radiation pulse, generated by an external laser source and superimposed to the electron bunch at the undulator entrance ("seeding"). Seeding promises an FEL ...

Snapshots of Firework in Nanoparticles at FLASH: Beyond Conventional Ultrafast Spectroscopy (Mar.2012)
A Holy Grail of ultrafast science and technology is to image the changing structure of matter at the nanoscale during the interaction with light. An international collaboration including DESY photon scientists led by Thomas Möller of the Technical University Berlin and Christoph Bostedt of SLAC at ...

Innovation Award on Synchrotron Radiation for DESY researchers (Dec. 2011)
The 'Innovation Award on Synchrotron Radiation 2011' was assigned to K.Tiedtke, U. Jastrow, A. A. Sorokin (DESY Hamburg), U. Kroth, M. Richter (PTB Berlin), and S.V. Bobashev (Joffe Physico-Technical Institute, St. Petersburg). On 1 December 2011, they received the Innovation-Award in Berlin for ...

Construction start for FLASH II (Sep. 2011)
For years, the free-electron laser (FEL) FLASH at DESY has been generating X-ray laser light for an ever increasing user community. The construction started on 20 Sept. 2011 for the next expansion stage FLASH II, with the aim to serve more users and at the same time apply the most recent ...

Fastest "molecular movie" recorded at FLASH (Jan. 2011)
A team of scientists from four German institutes including HASYLAB/DESY, led by HZB/TUB researchers, recorded two images of a micro-object with soft X-ray pulses, which were separated by only 50 femtoseconds. The measurement of this "molecular movie" was performed at beamline BL3 at FLASH at ...

Terahertz flashes enable accurate X-ray measurements at FLASH (Feb. 2011)
Many physical and chemical processes occur on extremely short time and length scales - as a rule within quadrillionths of a second on lengths of billionths of a metre. Researchers study such processes using intense ultrashort X-ray flashes. As is well known from photography: the faster a process ...