Scientists from DESY and European XFEL develop method for dramatic improvement of X-ray lasers
X-ray free-electron lasers (XFELs) are new, large-scale research facilities that open up completely new insights in the nanoworld. With X-ray flashes of unprecedented brightness and shortness, the XFELs allow direct observation of single molecules, atoms, and even chemical reactions. Several of these new facilities have either just started operation or are currently under construction in the US, Japan, Germany, Switzerland, and Korea. In 2010, researchers from Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY) and European XFEL, both in Hamburg, had devised a way to dramatically improve the already remarkable features of these large machines by placing a special crystal into the path of the radiation. Now their colleagues from Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in the US and the Technological Institute for Superhard and Novel Carbon Materials in Troitsk, Russia, implemented the setting proposed by their colleagues in Germany and confirmed the predicted outcome. The results are now published in Nature Photonics (doi:10.1038/nphoton.2012.180).