It’s difficult today to imagine life without X-rays: For over 110 years this high-energy form of radiation has played a key role not only in medicine and materials sciences but also in fundamental research. The rapid improvement of X-ray sources has opened up new areas of application and unforeseen fields of research. Today this intense light, as generated by particle accelerators, is used by scientists all over the world for a variety of experiments. With its unique range of light sources, DESY is one of the leading research centres in the field of photon science.

Lighting up research

Enormous progress has been made since the 1960s, the period when particle accelerators were first used to generate synchrotron radiation, particularly as a result of improvements to the electron storage rings. Indeed, the brilliance of the light from these sources has increased by a factor of 1000 every ten years! The ever improving quality of such X-rays has opened up completely new research opportunities for scientists – in areas such as the environmental sciences, for example, or even archeometry, the investigation of archaeological remains using scientific methods.

Pioneering experiments at DESY

From the very beginning DESY has been at the forefront of this extremely exciting development. A series of pioneering experiments have been carried out at DESY accelerators, including the first use of synchrotron radiation in the field of biology in 1971, the first measurements of Mößbauer spectra using synchrotron radiation (1984), the first direct measurement of phonons with X-rays (1986) and the first investigations of magnetism by means of X-ray absorption spectroscopy (1987). Most of these projects have been performed in close collaboration with university-based research groups. At the same time, this period also saw the introduction of the extremely successful policy of enabling major research institutions, such as the European Molecular Biology Laboratory EMBL, to set up their own outstations at DESY’s synchrotron radiation sources. Each year more than 2000 scientists from around the world use the light sources at DESY to conduct experiments in the field of science with photons.

Light of the future

Modern synchrotron radiation sources are set to play a key role in the field of nanotechnology and related research. This is because they provide intense, tunable and very coherent X-rays on the nanometre scale. PETRA III, the world’s best synchrotron radiation source in the hard X-ray range, went into operation in 2009. Even in its first operation phase, users were able to carry out extremely promising experiments. All the beamlines at PETRA III will be operational by the end of 2011. In conjunction with the DORIS III storage ring, which is especially suitable for experiments requiring a high photon flux and is therefore an ideal partner to PETRA III, this provides the national and international user community with a unique combination of synchrotron radiation facilities.

Today’s light sources are primarily suited for investigating equilibrium states of matter. Yet researchers also dream of being able to observe physical or biological systems as they work – i.e. to progress from still images to proper films. For this, however, the X-ray pulses generated by the storage rings are still too weak and, critically, too long compared to the time scales on which the processes of nature take place. The type of radiation required to record images at such a high temporal resolution can only be produced by totally new types of X-ray sources: X-ray lasers based on linear particle accelerators will achieve this goal. Again, DESY is one of the pioneers in this field.

Since 2005 researchers have had access to FLASH at DESY, a unique free-electron laser in the soft X-ray range. Initial experiments with this facility already yielded groundbreaking results that are setting new standards for scientific investigation. The number of exciting publications based on experiments at FLASH demonstrates the strong impact this facility has on international photon science. Starting in 2011, the facility will be expanded with a second tunnel section and a second experimental hall, FLASH II. This will double the user capacity of the facility and satisfy the great demand for beam time at FLASH.

Meanwhile, the X-ray laser European XFEL, which has been developed and prepared with strong participation of DESY, is scheduled to go into operation in 2014. With its unique combination of extremely high peak brilliance and very high average brilliance, the European XFEL will break new ground in a vast range of exciting areas of both science and technology and yield first-time answers to thrilling scientific questions – despite the fact that similar facilities in Japan and the USA are scheduled to commence operation slightly earlier. Indeed, a further key advantage over competing facilities is that DESY is already successfully operating and using FLASH, the prototype for the European XFEL, which will ensure that the user community of the European XFEL is ideally prepared for carrying out research with the new X-ray laser.

Partnerships for outstanding research

The unique facilities at DESY are complemented by various cooperations that further consolidate the research centre’s world-class position in photon science. The “Center for Free-Electron Laser Science” (CFEL) is a centre of excellence for photon science at next-generation light sources that is unique in Europe. Across all borders of scientific disciplines and institutions, the CFEL members strive to fathom the full potential of the new free-electron lasers. The CFEL team comprises more than 70 scientists, who are very successful users of both FLASH and the LCLS X-ray laser in California and produce world-class scientific results.

In addition, the interdisciplinary “Centre for Structural Systems Biology” (CSSB) is being established on the DESY campus in Hamburg. Using the DESY light sources, infectious diseases researchers and physicists at the CSSB will investigate with atomic resolution how pathogens attack and explore the molecular basis of diseases with extremely high spatial and temporal resolution.

As a new institution for scientific competence, the “Partnership for Innovation, Education and Research” (PIER) – a cooperation with the University of Hamburg – aims to become a crystallization point for outstanding research in the fields of particle and astroparticle physics, nanosciences, photon science and infection and structural biology in Northern Germany.