FLASH News Archive 2025

FLASH welcomes first user groups after shutdown

 A new round of user experiments is starting this week at DESY's free-electron laser FLASH. During a long FLASH2020+ shutdown, the FLASH1 branch was completely replaced and converted into an externally seeded FEL which is currently being gradually put into operation. The practically unchanged FLASH2 FEL branch was successfully put back into operation very quickly. ...

DESY's free-electron laser FLASH restarts after extensive upgrade

 Following a comprehensive 14-month upgrade as part of the FLASH2020+ project, DESY’s free-electron laser FLASH is restarting – now offering new, unique capabilities for research on its FLASH1 branch. Once scientific user operations resume, tailored, extremely stable and spectrally narrow X-ray pulses will be available for experiments. Combined with FLASH’s high repetition rate, this opens up entirely new opportunities for precise studies ...

Watching superheated silver nanoparticles bubbling

 Matter under extreme conditions, especially at extreme temperatures and pressures, plays an important role in many fields. These range from astrophysics and geology over inertial fusion reactor studies to applied research on material processing by laser ablation. Due to the complex behaviour of matter under such conditions the underlying interactions are not yet fully understood. In recent years isolated nanoparticles, which form well-defined ...

New ways of optimising energy materials

 Those who understand down to the atomic level what happens when energy is converted in solar cells—switching elements of computer chips or reactors for the production of hydrogen—can optimally improve them so that they function as quickly, economically, and for as long as possible. This requires methods to observe the processes at the atomic and even subatomic level on timescales of picoseconds or even femtoseconds. These are quadrillionths ...

Protein fireworks can lead to identification of their structures

X-ray snapshot: How light bends an active substance

 With the help of the world's most powerful X-ray laser, European XFEL, a research team led by Goethe University Frankfurt and the research centre DESY has achieved an important breakthrough: Using the example of the pharmaceutically active substance 2-thiouracil, they applied a long-established imaging technique to complex molecules for the first time. Although 2-thiouracil is no longer applied therapeutically, it is part of a group of ...

Femtosecond insights into laser-assisted photoemission from metal surfaces

 The recent advancements in high-intensity ultrafast X-ray science have paved the way for a new era of time-resolved pump-probe experiments: They have the potential to reveal previously inaccessible information about the interactions of photons with surfaces and the electronic dynamics they induce. This study presents an innovative investigation of the laser-assisted photoelectric effect (LAPE) from metallic surfaces, offering novel insights into ...

A Global Vision for Helical X-Ray-Laser Pulses to Unveil Life’s Fastest Movements

 Over the past years, scientists worldwide have collaborated extensively to develop cutting-edge approaches with helical free-electron laser (FEL) pulses. These advancements aim to capture some of the fastest motions in nature, exploring them at the level of specific elements with a special ‘twist’. In Physical Review Research, leading experts from institutions such as the University of Hamburg, DESY, European XFEL, and SLAC outline the ...