FLASH News Archive 2020

FLASH reveals ultrafast dynamics of photocatalysis


An international team of scientists have studied, for the first time, the light induced oxidation of carbon monoxide (CO) to carbon dioxide (CO2) on the surface of an oxide photocatalyst in real-time using the soft X-ray free-electron laser FLASH combined with theoretical calculations. According to their findings, which are published in the journal ACS Catalysis, the photoconversion of CO to CO2 takes place between 1.2 and ...

Science@FELs 2020 virtual conference attracted record attendance


The Science@FELs conference is organised biannually by the 'FELs of Europe' collaboration and has evolved into one of the most important international conferences in free-electron laser (FEL) science, highlighting scientific progress made in this field. With a record registration number of more than 700 participants for this first virtual conference, the internet cables were 'running ...

Study at FLASH: XUV lasing from exploding noble-gas nanoclusters


An international team of scientists, headed by Nina Rohringer from DESY and Unversität Hamburg, has succeeded in getting bursts of laser-like extreme ultraviolet (XUV) emission from noble-gas clusters in the transient warm dense matter state. Xenon clusters were irradiated by DESY’s free-electron laser FLASH, and the resulting strongly amplified fluorescence signal was analysed by a high-resolution spectrometer. ...

FLASH2020+ technical design phase started


The technical design phase of the FLASH2020+ project at DESY started with an internal virtual kick-off meeting. Over 270 participants mainly from DESY and the campus in Hamburg joined the project team online on 3 July 2020. Key topics were the upgrade project of the free-electron laser (FEL), scientific goals, the embedding at DESY and the international landscape, the project structure and its timeline over the next five ...

HEXTOF at FLASH - Merging time-resolved photoemission techniques into a new instrument


In the quest to gain predictive understanding of the functionality of condensed matter systems, the energy and momentum analysis of photoemitted electrons provide the most direct insights. Time-resolved photoemission in combination with the high-repetition rate of the free-electron laser FLASH at DESY enables now to probe the sub-picosecond dynamics of systems at the new versatile instrument for high energy X-ray ...