PHOTON SCIENCE

The 'Helmholtz International Beamline for Extreme Fields' (HIBEF) combines the European XFEL’s X-ray radiation with two high power lasers, a powerful magnetic coil, and provides a platform for research with diamond anvil cells. HIBEF, which was founded in 2013 by DESY and HZDR, involves a user consortium involving more than 350 scientists at 60 research institutions in 16 countries, such as the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC). DESY and the Helmholtz-Institute Jena are some of the institutions of the international HIBEF consortium which is led by HZDR and operates and contributes to setups at the HED instrument at EuXFEL.

The beamline is part of the High Energy Density (HED) experimental station at the European XFEL, enabling deep insights into the structure of materials and hyper-fast natural plasma-physical processes.This will help researchers drive innovation in materials and accelerator research, for example, thanks to improved models of planet formation and simulations of processes in plasma. The HIBEF user consortium has contributed a second target chamber, a diamond anvil cell platform, the RE.LA.X and DiPOLE laser systems, and a laser-shock platform.