With 27,000 X-ray flashes per second, free-electron laser visualize objects that researchers have never seen before. The Volkswagen Foundation supports the establishment of the pioneering method with a new funding initiative.
In the future, X-ray lasers may be used, inter alia, by structural biologists to decrypt the composition of viruses, or by material scientists to explore the three-dimensional characteristics of materials at the nanoscale. The free-electron laser (FEL) for X-ray radiation will make this research possible. It is currently built at the Deutsches Electronen-Synchrotron (DESY) in Hamburg, a research center of the Helmholtz Association, and is expected to be brought on line in 2014.
Until then, the free-electron laser at Stanford University in California remains the most powerful (Linac Coherent Light Source - LCLS). Since September 2009, researchers are gathering experimental experience there.
To ensure that this know-how will be available in Hamburg at the start of the European XFEL, the Volkswagen Foundation will send young researchers to Stanford for an up to two-year research stay, followed by a funding period in Germany. For this purpose, the foundation has set up the new initiative "Research with the free-electron lasers: Peter Paul Ewald fellowships at the LCLS in Stanford".
The Peter Paul Ewald-Fellowships - named after Peter Paul Ewald (1888-1985), a pioneer of X-ray methods – is aimed at Postdocs and will (initially) be granted for three years.
For more information on the new funding initiative, see "Research with the free-electron lasers: Peter Paul Ewald fellowships at the LCLS in Stanford".
