Physics with Free Electron Lasers

Free Electron Lasers (FEL’s) are the ultimate microscope to explore matter at the fundamental limits of electron motion with atomic precision. These accelerator-driven X-ray sources offer fs X-ray pulses of unprecedented brightness and peak power. This enables novel classes of physics experiments exploring non-linear and or ultrafast dynamical processes in chemistry, biology, and solid state physics. Furthermore, the coherence of the FEL opens up the possibility for single shot imaging (holography) of nanosystems.

Several of these facilities have become operational during the last decade. FLASH at DESY and FERMI at Trieste were the first serving the VUV and soft X-ray range. Hard X-ray facilities are operational at LCLS in Stanford (USA) and SACLA in Japan, while the EU-XFEL in Hamburg and the Swiss FEL at PSI have just recently become available for experiments.

In this course we review the new and exciting experimental capabilities enabled by these sources and discuss the first real science results already achieved.

Further information