Scientists create “Swiss army knife” for electron beams
Pocket accelerator combines four functions in one device
Microwaves reveal detailed structure of molecular motor
A team of scientists has used microwaves to unravel the exact structure of a tiny molecular motor. The nano-machine consists of just a single molecule, made up of 27 carbon and 20 hydrogen atoms (C27H20). Like a macroscopic motor it has a stator and a rotor, connected by an axle. The analysis reveals just how the individual parts of the motor are constructed and arranged with respect to each other. The team led by DESY Leading Scientist Melanie Schnell reports the results in the journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition.
Report on the FCC Week 2017 in Berlin
The 3rd meeting of the worldwide Future Circular Collider (FCC week 2017) brought together more than 500 leading minds in engineering and science from 147 institutes to discuss the progress of the present study and lay the foundations for the FCC design report. The increasing numbers reflect the attractiveness of the project and the diversity of the scientific challenges offered by this large-scale research infrastructure.
Biggest X-ray laser in the world generates its first laser light
In the metropolitan region of Hamburg, the European XFEL, the biggest X-ray laser in the world, has reached the last major milestone before the official opening in September. The 3.4 km long facility, most of which is located in underground tunnels, has generated its first X-ray laser light. The X-ray light has a wavelength of 0.8 nm—about 500 times shorter than that of visible light. At first lasing, the laser had a repetition rate of one pulse per second, which will later increase to 27 000 per second.
Progress on Belle II: magnets in Japan and tests at DESY
The Belle II project at the Japanese research centre KEK is making great strides forward. The detector is being upgraded in international collaboration and must be tested thoroughly before it start taking data with the similarly upgraded SuperKEKB accelerator.
SuperKEKB: back on track – better than ever
Particle accelerator SuperKEKB in Japan starts commissioning phase
After five years of upgrade work, the particle accelerator SuperKEKB at the Japanese research centre KEK has taken up operation again. In the first days of March 2016, the first stable beams of electrons and positrons were turning in the 3-kilometre-long ring. This is an important step towards producing particle collisions inside the similarly refurbished detector Belle II, which is still under construction by an international collaboration and will start operation in 2017. In the unprecedented large number of collisions of electrons and their anti-particles, physicists want to produce large numbers of B and D mesons as well as tau leptons. By studying very rare processes they hope to find new physics beyond the standard model of particle physics as well as an answer to the question why the universe consists of largely of matter even though equal amounts of matter and antimatter should have been produced in the Big Bang.
Better solar cells, superconductors and hard-drives
Using DESY’s light sources, scientists have opened a new door to better solar cells, novel superconductors and smaller hard-drives.The research reported in the scientific journal Nature Communications enhances the understanding of the interface of two materials, where completely new properties can arise. With their work, the team of Prof. Andrivo Rusydi, from the National University of Singapore, and Prof. Michael Rübhausen, from the Hamburg Centre for Free-Electron Laser Science, have solved a long standing mystery in the condensed matter physics…
New milestone reached for the European XFEL construction
On June 2013 an important milestone was reached for the European X-ray free-electron laser [XFEL] with the completion of its underground portion. Located in the Hamburg area (Germany), the European XFEL is one of the largest and most ambitious European projects to date. Starting full operations in 2016, the European XFEL is expected to generate intensive, ultrashort X-ray flashes that will open up entirely new areas of research with X-rays that are currently inaccessible. Organisations from 12 European countries…
DESY reveals hidden paintings of Rembrandt
Underneath the “Old Man in Military Costume” painted by the Dutch artist Rembrandt in the years 1630/31, investigations spotted another portrait which was only faintly distinguishable with all applied technologies. An international team of scientists now used a detailed mock-up to test different methods to look beneath the original painting at DESYs X-ray source DORIS and at the National Synchrotron Light Source [NSLS] of the Brookhaven National Laboratory [BNL] in the United States, as well as with a mobile X-ray scanner. The results are published as the cover story of the “Journal of Analytical Atomic Spectrometry” [JAAS] of the British Royal Society of Chemistry…
PETRA III X-ray microscope reveals to record resolution
PETRA III is now the world’s most advanced X-ray microscope, with a record-breaking resolution of 10 nanometres. The light source – located at the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron [DESY] – can see down to structures ten thousand times thinner than a human hair.
The apparatus – which is already available to users – has many possible applications, including such uses as: imaging the structure of microchips, investigating carbon nanotubes and studying the chemistry of catalyst nanoparticles…
