Abstract
The European XFEL is a hard X-ray free-electron laser (FEL) based on a high-electron-energy superconducting linear accelerator. The superconducting technology allows for the acceleration of many electron bunches within one radio-frequency pulse of the accelerating voltage and, in turn, for the generation of a large number of hard X-ray pulses. We report on the performance of the European XFEL accelerator with up to 5,000 electron bunches per second and demonstrating a full energy of 17.5 GeV. Feedback mechanisms enable stabilization of the electron beam delivery at the FEL undulator in space and time. The measured FEL gain curve at 9.3 keV is in good agreement with predictions for saturated FEL radiation. Hard X-ray lasing was achieved between 7 keV and 14 keV with pulse energies of up to 2.0 mJ. Using the high repetition rate, an FEL beam with 6 W average power was created.
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European XFEL / Luftaufnahmen: FHH, Landesbetrieb Geoinf. und Vermessung
DESY / Dirk Nölle
European XFEL / Heiner Müller-Elsner
Data availability
The data that support the plots within this paper and other findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Change history
27 July 2020
A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-020-0680-3
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Acknowledgements
The accelerator of the European XFEL and major parts of the infrastructure have been contributed by the Accelerator Construction Consortium, coordinated by DESY. The consortium consists of Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique – Institut National de Physique Nucléaire et de Physique des Particules (CNRS–IN2P3, Orsay, France), Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique et aux Energies Alternatives – Institut de Recherche sur les Lois Fondamentales de l’Univers (CEA–IRFU, Saclay, France), DESY (Hamburg, Germany), Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare – Laboratori Acceleratori e Superconduttività Applicata (INFN–LASA, Milano, Italy), National Centre for Nuclear Research (NCBJ, Świerk, Poland), Wrocław University of Technology (WUT, Wrocław, Poland), The Henryk Niewodniczański Institute for Nuclear Physics – Polish Academy of Science (IFJ–PAN, Kraków, Poland), Institute for High Energy Physics (IHEP, Protvino, Russia), D.V. Efremov Scientific Research Institute of Electrophysical Apparatus (NIIEFA, St. Petersburg, Russia), Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics – Siberian Branch of Academy of Science (BINP, Novosibirsk, Russia), Institute for Nuclear Research – Russian Academy of Science (INR, Moscow, Russia), Centro de Investigaciones Energéticas, Medioambientales y Tecnológicas (CIEMAT, Madrid, Spain), Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM, Madrid, Spain), Stockholm University (SU, Stockholm, Sweden), Uppsala University (UU, Uppsala, Sweden) and Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI, Villigen, Switzerland). A list of members of the Accelerator Construction Consortium is provided in the Supplementary Information.