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Release -- Superconductor Week does not edit or endorse the following
news release: Start
of Free-Electron Laser at DESY
Hamburg
, Germany, Aug. 4, 2005: With the symbolic push of a button, German Federal
Chancellor Gerhard Schröder handed over the new free-electron laser VUV-FEL at
the research center DESY to the scientists on the afternoon of Wednesday, August
3. "This worldwide unique pioneering facility for free-electron lasers for
the generation of X-ray radiation is thus now at the disposal of the scientific
users," comments Professor Albrecht Wagner,
Chairman
of the DESY Board of Directors, who welcomed the chancellor together with
Hamburg's Science Senator Jörg Dräger, Ph.D.
"The VUV-FEL at DESY is the worldwide first free-electron laser for the
short-wavelength range of ultraviolet radiation. It generates especially intense
and extremely short flashes of laser light that open up completely new insights
into the nanoworld," says DESY Research Director Professor Jochen
Schneider. "Using the VUV-FEL, scientists can for instance "film"
chemical reactions. The unique radiation enables ground-breaking experiments in
fields such as cluster physics, solid state physics, surface physics, plasma
research and molecular biology."
At present, a total of 29 research projects are planned at the VUV-FEL. These
will be carried out by around 200 scientists from 60 institutes in 11 countries,
including researchers from national and international universities and research
institutions as well as Max Planck institutes. Many further projects have
already been proposed. The costs for the free-electron laser VUV-FEL amount to a
total of 117 million Euros, 90 percent of which are financed by public funds and
10 percent by international partners. 90 percent of the public funds are born by
the Federal Republic of Germany, and 10 percent by the City of
Hamburg
.
In terms of brilliance, the VUV-FEL sets new standards: Its peak brilliance
surpasses that of the most modern synchrotron radiation sources by a factor of
ten million. In addition, its radiation is coherent, and its wavelength is
tunable within the range from 6 to 30 nanometers. The extremely short duration
of its very intense radiation pulses, which last only 10 to 50 femtoseconds
(thousand million millionths of a second), is especially important. It allows
scientists to directly observe the formation of chemical bonds or the processes
that occur during magnetic data storage. The high energy of the radiation
enables them to create energy densities in matter in the lab which are so high
that they can normally only be found in the cosmos. It also provides a new
access to the current open questions of plasma physics.
The free-electron laser VUV-FEL makes use of the new technology which was
developed at DESY from 1992 to 2004 by the international team of the TESLA
Collaboration: In a first step, electrons are brought to high energies by a
superconducting linear accelerator. They then race through a periodic
arrangement of magnets, the so-called undulator, which forces them to follow a
slalom course and thereby radiate flashes of light. According to the novel SASE
principle of "self-amplified spontaneous emission", the process
finally generates the short-wavelength, intense flashes of laser light.
As a user facility, the VUV-FEL will offer a total of five experimental
stations, at which different instruments can be operated alternately. In
addition, its operation will provide important insights for the
3.4-kilometer-long European X-ray laser XFEL that is being planned in
Hamburg
. The XFEL will generate even shorter wavelengths down to 0.085 nanometers, it
is to take up operation in 2012. Using the VUV-FEL, scientists will be able to
study the elementary processes of the interaction of this extremely intense,
extremely short-pulsed coherent radiation with matter. With regard to both the
accelerator technology and the applications of the XFEL, the VUV-FEL will thus
lay the foundation for completely new insights into the structure and dynamics
of the nanoworld.
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