FLASH - The Free-Electron Laser Facility in Hamburg

by Dr Siegfried Schreiber (DESY, Hamburg)

Tuesday 10 Dec 2013, 17:15 → 18:45 Europe/Berlin

Auditorium (MPI fuer Physik)

Since summer 2005, FLASH, the free-electron laser user facility at DESY, delivers high brilliance XUV and soft x-ray FEL radiation for a wide range of photon experiments. The FEL is based on the SASE principle driven by a high brightness electron beam. It produces ultra-short X-ray pulses in the femtosecond scale with tunable wavelengths between 4.2 nm and 44 nm. A TESLA type superconducting linear accelerator allows electron beam energies of up to 1.25 GeV with several thousand electron bunches per second. The facility has a length of 315 m, including 5 photon beamlines for soft X-rays and one beamline for THz radiation. All stations have access to optical lasers for pump-probe experiments. After a shutdown this year to connect a second undulator beamline (FLASH2) to the accelerator, FLASH is presently preparing the next user run scheduled for 2014/15. Besides photon experiments, FLASH beam time is also dedicated to improve its overall performance as an FEL user facility and to commission the new undulator and photon beamlines. Part of the yearly study time is allocated for general accelerator physics experiments and developments related to future projects, in particular the European XFEL and the International Linear Collider (ILC). FLASHForward, a plasma acceleration experiment is in preparation at FLASH at a dedicated beamline branching off the new FLASH2 beamline.