Los quintos.

Para los que dicosian moléculas,
Para los que calibran espectrometros,
Para los que buscan estados vestidos,
Para los que buscan bombear laseres XUV.
Para todos ellos.
El quinto hamrónico

The European X-Ray Free Electron Laser

The European X-Ray Free Electron Laser is a new (in construction) research facility in Germany near Hamburg, using an free electron laser which produces high intensity, coherent x-ray pulses at kHz repetition rate. Their intensities are several magnitudes brighter than those achieved today by conventional synchrotron light source. The XFEL and its unique characteristic will open new reasearch opportunities for scientists.

Page: European XFEL

The video is in german, I am sorry. The english version can be download here or directly watched on the XFEL homepage (right upper side)


(from European XFEL)


The construction time has already started in 2009 and will lead until 2014. Users can operate the facility and beamline in 2015. The project costs are around 1082 million euros (price level 2005) whereas Germany covers 54% and Russia 23%. The rest is split among the other members. Currently 13 countries are participating, all from europe except China. The facility has a total length of 3.4km (including accelerator), starting from DESY in Hamburg.

Characteristics of the European X-Ray Laser:

• wavelength: 0.1 - 6nm
• repetition rate: 27kHz!
• pulse duration: < 100fs
  
• average [peak] brilliance: 1.6*10^25 [5*10^33]
• coherence: yes

The average brilliance is around 10 000 better as the best conventional X-Ray sources, the peak brilliance even a billion times. As the X-Ray flashes are coherent, they can even make 3D images at the atomic level! A short but good description how the X-Ray flashes are generated you can find here.

The XFEL allows researcher to enter new areas which were inaccessible so far. Tiny structures, ultrafast processes and extreme states of matter will be explored. Let me quote from their homepage:
"Using the X-ray flashes of the European XFEL, scientists will be able to map the atomic details of viruses, decipher the molecular composition of cells, take three-dimensional images of the nanoworld, film chemical reactions and study the processes in the interior of planets."
The XFEL opens a lot of new research possibilites, have a look at their research page.

Take time and enjoy the XFEL homepage. It is seriously done and contains a lot of interesting information. Have fun.

additional information: wikipedia -XFEL

"Your Own Laser Experiments"

Doing laser experiments at home are in most cases challenging due missing tools. Nevertheless some easy but still very interesting experiments can be done demonstrating fundamental phenomena. By chance I found a homepage which describes in detail and well explained some very interesting and easy to do experiments.

The page is the EU-HOU project: “Hands on Universe, Europe. Bringing frontline interactive astronomy to the classroom” and has the goal of renewing the teaching of science and awaking the interest of science to the young generation. The page covers mainly experiments from astronomy but some nice optics experiments (important for astronomy) are presented too.

EU-HOU, startpage

Four easy laser optics experiments can be found here:

EU-HOU, Laser Experiments
EU-HOU, home-made spectroscope

They handle of the:

• “Refraction , or bent light”
• “Determination of the index of refraction by a laser pointer”
• “Eureka, Light is a wave”
• "A home-made spectroscope"
  

My favorite is the third one but all of them are great. The easiest one to perform is the first one and very interesting for many peoples will be the last one. But let me show you some more pictures:

(bent light)

(measuring the refraction index)

(halogen bulb and its spectrum)

All the pictures are taken from the EU-HOU page. Note that the EU-HOU page is addressed for teachers but every pupil (high school) can do it too. And please,

never never look into a laser beam!

It can cause serious irreparable eye damage! Hence, take care even with a laser pointer. Enjoy the experiments!