Dr. T. Tschentscher - XFEL Scientific Director will talk in room A, Polo di Matematica, 17 pm, 15 October 2015. The European XFEL facility is being realized in Hamburg by means of contributions by EU shareholders and partners including Italy. It is one of the largest scientific efforts of EU of the last decade, with possibile applications in physics, molecular biology, material science, chemistry, geology and planetary science.

Scientists of different fields are cordially invited to attend the seminar entitled Ultrafast Science using x-ray free electron laser radiation (see below).

Ultrafast Science Using X-ray Free-Electron Laser Radiation

Tschentscher,^a Thomas

^aEuropean XFEL, 22607 Hamburg, Germany

Short-wavelength free-electron laser (FEL) radiation since short provides the possibility to study phenomena and properties previously not accessible. In particular, the combinations of ultrashort pulse duration, high pulse energy and high coherence of x-ray FEL radiation enable new type of experiments. Key application areas are the investigation of ultrafast structural dynamics in molecules and condensed-matter and the atomic structure determination of ultra-dilute single particles. Furthermore, new opportunities open for non-linear x-ray spectroscopy.

X-ray FEL radiation is available since 2009 when the LCLS (SLAC, U.S.A.) started its user program. Since 2011 also at SACLA (Spring-8, Japan) operates for users and three more projects will start providing x-rays over the coming 2 years. Among them, the European XFEL is a large international research infrastructure in the Hamburg Metropol region, North Germany. This infrastructure will provide researchers with free-electron laser (FEL) radiation in the x-ray range from 0.25 to 25 keV. With its super-conducting 17.5 GeV electron accelerator it will be the first facility to provide hard x-ray FEL radiation at high repetition rates, similar to a synchrotron lightsource, thereby enabling new types of experiments. Scientific applications at the European XFEL address a large variety of areas such as physics, chemistry, structural biology, materials sciences, or plasma and planetary physics.

In the talk a brief introduction to FEL radiation and techniques will be provided, the European XFEL project introduced and recent scientific achievements will be reviewed and discussed.