Gerard Lawler

  • CV
  • Career
  • Bio
  • Publications
  • Talks
  • Blog

Xray Free Electron Lasers (XFEL)


Xray free electron lasers or XFELs are devices of significant interest in the accelerator physics community and broader scientific community as a whole. They employ the general principle that accelerating charged particles radiate photons in order to produce very bright coherent bunches of xray photons. These xrays can then be used in fields as diverse as biology and materials engineering. XFELS are the exclusive purview of large scale national level labs as of the writing of this article. The first was the LCLS at SLAC National Lab in Menlo Park, California. Since then several additional XFELs have been successfully built and commissioned.

 

The XFEL is built upon the electron linear accelerator or linac. The US Particle Accelerator School has many useful materials for introducing oneself to the terminology and concepts involved in particle accelerator science. The most recent fundamentals course presentation I would recommend reviewing can be found here. One compelling direction for XFEL development is shrinking the size of the device such that they can be used in smaller scale laboratories, increasing accessibility to a very useful scientific tool. The Ultra-Compact XFEL is one notable concept for a university scale XFEL.