Synchrotron Light Sources and Free-Electron Lasers

This handbook presents the development of synchrotron light sources and free-electron lasers as well as new scientific applications. Hardly any other discovery of the nineteenth century had such an impact on science and technology as Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen’s seminal discovery of X-rays in the year 1895. X-ray tubes soon became established as excellent instruments for numerous applications in medicine, biology, materials science and testing, chemistry and even public security. Developing new radiation sources with higher and higher brilliance and much extended spectral range for an ever widening field of research resulted in stunning developments like the electron storage ring and the free-electron laser.
This second edition includes both updated chapters and new contributions highlighting the most recent developments in the field. Reports on operation experience of the new FEL facilities are complemented by discussions of new developments in X-ray beamline optics and detectors. Contributions on applications now include high pressure work, catalytic processes and engineering materials, medical applications and studies of cultural heritage. New contributions on IR spectroscopy, resonant inelastic X-ray scattering (RIXS) and studies of liquids complete this second edition. 

Editors-in-Chief:

Jerome B. Hastings Jerome Hastings studied Applied Physics at Cornell University and did his Ph.D. under the guidance of B. W. Batterman. After working at the National Synchrotron Light Source for nearly 25 years, in October 2001 he moved to the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park, CA, USA. His main interest is in methods and instrumentation for accelerator based light sources. He developed the applications of ultrahigh-energy resolution methods applied to synchrotron-based Mössbauer spectroscopy and inelastic X-ray scattering. In addition, he led the ultrashort pulse spontaneous radiation facility “Sub-Picosecond Pulse Source” at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory from 2001 to 2006. In his tenure at the National Synchrotron Light Source (NSLS), the R&D effort developed many of the methods and instruments in common use today at third-generation synchrotron light sources. He is the science advisor for the LCLS and professor (research) in the Photon Science Faculty at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society.

Zhirong Huang studied Physics at California Institute of Technology and did his Ph.D. in accelerator and beam physics at Stanford University. After obtaining Ph.D. in 1998, he became an assistant scientist at Argonne National Laboratory and worked on both the APS storage ring and the FEL demonstration project at the APS linac. In 2002, he joined SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC) as a staff scientist. He became senior staff scientist and then professor of photon science at SLAC and Stanford University. Currently he is the director of the Accelerator Research Division at SLAC.

Zhirong has contributed significantly to the research and development, design, commissioning and operation of the world's first hard x-ray free-electron laser (LCLS). He is a fellow of the American Physical Society and a co-author of a textbook on Synchrotron Radiation and Free-Electron lasers published by Cambridge University Press.

Shaukat Khan Shaukat Khan studied Physics at Heidelberg University and received his doctor’s degree in 1987 for work in nuclear spectroscopy at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics. While working as a postdoc on a silicon vertex detector for the ARGUS experiment at DESY/Hamburg, he became more and more interested in accelerator physics. Consequently, he joined the BESSY II project in Berlin in 1993 where his research interests included collective beam instabilities and the generation of ultrashort X-ray pulses. After receiving his lecturer qualification (habilitation) from the Humboldt University of Berlin, he became W2 professor at Hamburg University in 2006 and full professor at TU Dortmund University in 2008. In addition to holding a chair in accelerator physics, he is director at the university-based synchrotron radiation facility DELTA where his working group develops laser-seeding techniques to produce ultrashort radiation pulses.

Thomas Tschentscher is Scientific Director at the European X-ray Free Electron Laser Facility in Schenefeld, Germany. He is responsible for the Development and Operation division, including most experts’ groups in the areas of instrumentation and data technologies. After receiving his PhD in condensed matter physics at the University of Hamburg / DESY he joined the ESRF, where he performed research in condensed matter electronic properties and hard materials properties. As a senior scientific staff member of DESY he was a member of the European XFEL Project Team.

His main research interests lies in the field of ultrafast phenomena in solids, plasmas and gaseous matter and in intense x-ray matter interaction. Initially, he studied ultrafast time-dependent processes in solid-state photo-chemistry using ultrashort pulse x-ray sources, with a focus on photo-induced phase transitions. With the availability of highly intense and ultrashort FEL pulses and of high-power optical lasers installed next to an FEL instrument, the emphasis of his activities shifted towards the investigation of ultrafast dynamics in the regime of condensed matter under extreme conditions. Another significant aspect of his work has been the development of new instrumentation for FEL experiments and of new FEL techniques.

Since 2011 he supports the implementation of large-scale physics research infrastructures in the European science area. He chaired the Scientific Advisory Committees of LCLS and currently serves as a member of the ELIBeamlines International Scientific Advisory Committee facilities.

Founding Editors:

Eberhard J. Jaeschke studied Physics at the universities of Erlangen and Princeton. After his Ph.D. in Nuclear Physics, he moved to the Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik, Heidelberg, where his interests turned more and more to the physics of accelerators and their development. At Heidelberg University, he taught experimental physics, got his habilitation, and was promoted to professor (apl). The Heidelberg-TSR – the first heavy ion cooler ring with electron and laser cooling, which he managed as project leader – was a worldwide recognized success. From Heidelberg, Eberhard Jaeschke moved to Berlin, becoming member of the board of directors of the Berliner-Elektronenspeicherring-Gesellschaft für Synchrotronstrahlung (BESSY), and received a call for a full professorship at the Humboldt Universität. He was project director of the construction of BESSY II, the first German third-generation synchrotron light source. His marvelous team managed to build BESSY II in time and on budget and turned after this success to the design of modern light sources, the free-electron lasers (FELs).

Research stays over the years were at Los Alamos, Stony Brook, Tokyo, Chalk River, and Novosibirsk, at the Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics.

Eberhard Jaeschke retired from BESSY after 18 years on the board and is now professor emeritus. In 2010, he was awarded the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Jochen R. Schneider studied Physics at the University of Hamburg and did his Ph.D. under the guidance of H. Maier-Leibnitz at the Institute Max von Laue-Paul Langevin in Grenoble, France. After working at the Hahn-Meitner Institute and the Technical University in Berlin, in December 1989 he moved to the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY in Hamburg, Germany. His main interest is in structural phase transitions and electronic properties of solids, as well as synchrotron radiation instrumentation. He developed γ -ray diffractometry and pioneered the application of high-energy synchrotron radiation in condensed matter research. In 1993 he became head of the synchrotron radiation laboratory HASYLAB at DESY; from 2000 to 2007, he was the first DESY Photon Science research director. In his tenure he initiated DESY’s third generation synchrotron radiation facility PETRA III, the free-electron lasers FLASH and European XFEL, and the Center for Free-Electron Laser Science (CFEL). After 2 years at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory at Stanford in charge of the experimental facilities division of the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS), he is now a fellow of CFEL and scientific advisor to the DESY Photon Science management.

In 1981 Jochen Schneider received the Victor Moritz Goldschmidt Award of the German Mineralogical Society, in 2001 the European Crystallography Prize, and in 2008 the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.