The advent of the first free-electron X-ray lasers (XFELs), FLASH in 2004 and LCLS in 2009, may prove to be the most profound development since the invention of the laser and, equally, the synchrotron. Sharp improvements in a number of laser parameters, most notably intensity and pulse duration, support this expectation. In particular, the talk will yield an overview of the experimental capabilities of the newly built European XFEL and in particular towards the High Energy Density scientific Instrument and its application in the studies of matter at extreme conditions with advanced time-resolved x-ray methods.
The European XFEL is a superconducting, radio-frequency free-electron laser simultaneously operating three variable-gap undulator SASE beamlines. Each beamline supplies two instruments with X-rays photon energy up to 25 keV photon energy. High Energy Density (HED) scientific instrument will allow investigations of a wide range of materials and systems at extreme conditions. For sample excitation a variety of high energy drivers will be installed [1]. Three separate optical laser systems will be available for warm- to hot-dense-matter creation, dynamic compression and laser-plasma interaction in electron-relativistic regime. These drivers will allow studies in space and time-resolution down to ~100 nm and 10 fs, respectively, and will be capable to generate pressures into the TPa regime, and electric field strength up to 1020 W/cm. This unique instrument is designed to enable the application of various x-ray probes including spectroscopic, diffraction and imaging methods [2]. Future capabilities of the HED instrument, including the HIBEF user consortium contributions [3], will be presented along with selected science cases.
[1] M. Nakatsutsumi, K. Appel, G. Priebe, I. Thorpe, A. Pelka, B. Muller, Th. Tschentscher, Technical design report: Scientific instrument High Energy Density Physics (HED), XFEL:EU TR-2014-001, Germany, 196 p (2014). doi:10.3204/XFEL.EU/TR-2014-001. See also www.xfel.eu/research/instruments/hed
[2] K. Appel, M. Nakatsutsumi, A. Pelka, G. Priebe, I. Thorpe, Th. Tschentscher, Plasma Phys. Control. Fusion 57, 014003 (2015).
[3] www.hibef.de