The hotly anticipated X-ray Free Electron Laser (XFEL) is nearing completion at the SPring-8 syncrotron facility in Hyogo Prefecture, and work is progressing toward startup in 2011. The 4th XFEL symposium was held on December 12, 2008, at the Tokyo International Exchange Center Heisei Plaza.
Speakers at the symposium gave detailed reports on the project’s progress in the past year. The SPring-8 Compact SASE Source (SCSS) accelerator, a smaller-scale prototype XFEL, has begun operation ahead of the startup of the full-size XFEL. The SCSS succeeded in seeding the laser and achieved acceleration inclination and a high repetition rate.
Close observation of spider silk was done by users of the SCSS accelerator, and two-photon ionization was achieved using the light from SCSS. Because the distance needed for the laser to reach saturation has been greatly shortened, the quality of light may rise further, and even more compact XFELs may be possible in the future.
The speakers also reported on the progress of the XFEL construction. The XFEL building is almost complete, they noted, and mass production of C band tubes and klystrons began last year, as did construction of the electron beam transport tunnel from which the electron beam will be injected into the SPring-8 accelerator. Design work on the experiment hall and beamlines also began last year.
Participants were especially interested in practical uses of the XFEL, particularly in research laboratories and industrial applications.
The XFEL has been a high-priority national technology project since it began in 2006. When complete, the device will generate light a billion times brighter than existing X-ray sources, with pulses 1,000 times shorter. The laser’s extremely fast femtosecond pulses will permit direct examination of the movements of objects at atomic-level resolution, and will help scientists break new ground in a variety of scientific fields, such as nanotechnology, materials science and life sciences. The facility should be available for experiments from April 2011.
