European XFEL has laid the groundwork for its eighth scientific instrument. During the recent Long Installation and Maintenance Period, around 500 metres of steel vacuum tubes were installed in one of the facility’s underground tunnels. These tubes terminate at the new High Energy X-ray Scattering (HXS) instrument.
Once operational, the new instrument will be the third to feed off of the SASE2 undulators, one of European XFEL’s three light sources. A silicon mirror, polished with extreme precision, is scheduled to be installed early next year. It will shift the X-ray beam between the existing Materials Imaging and Dynamics (MID) instrument and the new instrument at a higher rate than existing beam-sharing installations at European XFEL, allowing experiments to be conducted in parallel. “This will further optimize the use of our hard X-ray pulses,” says Harald Sinn, Head of the Instrumentation department at European XFEL. “HXS will also complement existing instruments and offer new opportunities for research.”
Scientific experiments at the new instrument will be able to take advantage of the shortest wavelenghts provided by the SASE2 undulators. This particularly energetic X-ray light is desirable for example for experiments under extreme conditions in a diamond anvil cell, which exerts immense pressure on a sample. These are currently conducted at the HED (High Energy Density) instrument, where they compete with other types of experiments. HXS will offer further opportunities to develop the experimental setup for experiments under extreme pressures, which was realised in collaboration with DESY and HZDR (Helmholtz Centre Dresden-Rossendorf). This includes, for example, materials research or the simulation of conditions such as those found inside planets. Past research includes work on the formation of diamond rain on ice giants such as Neptune and Uranus.
Read more on the European XFEL website
Image: View from the experiment hall into the tunnel, taken through a hole that was drilled through the one-metre-thick shielding wall. Since the picture was taken, beam transport pipes have been installed to carry X-ray pulses along the tunnel, through the hole, and into the newly constructed experiment station.
Credit: European XFEL