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The development of XFELs

Nature Reviews Physics volume 2, pages 330–331 (2020)Cite this article

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X-ray free-electron lasers (XFELs) have rapidly developed into unique tools for probing diverse systems of interest to different scientific disciplines with angstrom–femtosecond resolution. Claudio Pellegrini provides an overview of the milestones in the development of XFELs and their unique capabilities.

The first ruby laser was built 60 years ago by Theodore Maiman1. Since then, developing an X-ray laser has been a major goal in laser physics and in science. A laser that generates high-intensity, coherent X-ray pulses at angstrom wavelengths and femtosecond pulse durations — the characteristic length and timescales for atomic and molecular phenomena — allows imaging of periodic and non-periodic systems as well as non-crystalline states, and studies of dynamic processes in systems far from equilibrium, nonlinear interactions and X-ray quantum optics. Such techniques therefore open a window into electronic, atomic and molecular phenomena of interest to biology, chemistry, materials science and physics.

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Acknowledgements

The author thanks U. Bergmann, M. Dunne, B. Denham, Z. Huang and C.-C. Kao for many useful comments. Work carried out with the support of the US Department of Energy (Contract No. DE-AC02-76F00515).

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  1. SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Menlo Park, CA, USA

    Claudio Pellegrini

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Correspondence to Claudio Pellegrini.

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Pellegrini, C. The development of XFELs. Nat Rev Phys 2, 330–331 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42254-020-0197-1

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