The European XFEL X-ray laser is a 3.4-km-long facility which runs essentially underground. The three sites (framed in red) are located in Hamburg (DESY-Bahrenfeld and Osdorfer Born) as well as in the south of the city of Schenefeld (Pinneberg district, Schleswig-Holstein). Aerial views: FHH, Landesbetrieb Geoinf. und Vermessung © European XFEL
The 15-hectare site Schenefeld houses the European XFEL research centre, where around 350 people will work. The site accomodates the main building (in the foreground), supply halls for the underground tunnel “fan”, infrastructure facilities, and possibly buildings for partner institutes. (Credit: © European XFEL (Blunck+Morgen Architekten))
The central building on the European XFEL research site: The tunnels from which the laserlike X-ray flashes are led to the experiment stations end in the underground experiment hall beneath the headquarters. These house labs, offices, seminar rooms and a specialist library. (Credit: © European XFEL (Blunck+Morgen Architekten))
In the clean room. Work on superconducting accelerator elements in the clean room.
© DESY
Tadesse Assefa, PhD student in the FXE group, is preparing for a time-resolved X-ray experiment at DESYs PETRA III beamline P01.
© European XFEL
Femtochemistry. First, a chemical reaction is triggered by a laser flash. A second laser pulse is then sent at varying time intervals after the first one to take instantaneous snapshots of the changes that have occurred in the molecule.
© DESY
“Filming” chemical reactions using ultra-fast lasers.
The completed accelerator tunnel on 20 March 2017 (Credit: © European XFEL / Heiner Müller-Elsner)
Last preparations at the undulators in the tunnel, the structures that generate the X-ray radiation (Credit: © Heiner Müller-Elsner / European XFEL)