Free-electron lasers articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Methods to characterize the free-electron laser pulses are evolving and their performances are also improving. Here the authors demonstrate a method based on the artificial neural networks to predict the output pulses of the X-ray free-electron laser by considering the electron beam parameters as input.

    • Kenan Li
    • , Guanqun Zhou
    •  & Anne Sakdinawat

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Intense light pulses can create nonlinear ionization processes in atoms and molecules. Here the authors study the photoionization of xenon atoms using intense free-electron laser pulses that can create extremely high charge states and produce hollow atoms, featuring up to six simultaneous core-holes.

    • Aljoscha Rörig
    • , Sang-Kil Son
    •  & Rebecca Boll

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Since their initial operation, free-electron lasers are regularly upgraded in their performance and parameter control. Here the authors present the first lasing results of the soft X-ray free-electron laser beamline of the Paul Scherrer Institute, demonstrating different modes of operation and polarisation control of the tailored soft X-ray pulses.

    • Eduard Prat
    • , Andre Al Haddad
    •  & Tobias Weilbach

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Free-electron lasers (FELs) can produce bright X-ray pulses, but require high quality electron beams. Here the authors show how to generate and preserve ultrabright electron beams from plasma-based accelerators for ultra-compact, high-brightness X-ray FELs.

    • A. F. Habib
    • , G. G. Manahan
    •  & B. Hidding

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Free-electron lasers are capable of high repetition rates and it is assumed that protein crystals often do not survive the first X-ray pulse. Here the authors address these issues with a demonstration of multi-hit serial crystallography in which multiple FEL pulses interact with the sample without destroying it.

    • Susannah Holmes
    • , Henry J. Kirkwood
    •  & Connie Darmanin

  • Article
    | Open Access

    X-ray free electron lasers provide high photon flux to explore single particle diffraction imaging of biological samples. Here the authors present dynamic electronic structure calculations and benchmark them to single-particle XFEL diffraction data of sucrose clusters to predict optimal single-shot imaging conditions.

    • Phay J. Ho
    • , Benedikt J. Daurer
    •  & Christoph Bostedt

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Understanding strong X-ray induced phenomena is important for applications of X-ray free-electron laser imaging. Here, the authors show time-resolved measurements of X-ray free-electron laser induced electronic decay of CH2I2 molecule probed with NIR pulses and identify mechanisms behind different transient states lifetimes.

    • Hironobu Fukuzawa
    • , Tsukasa Takanashi
    •  & Kiyoshi Ueda

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Exploring the photoionization process leads to better understanding of the fundamental interactions between light and matter. Here the authors show the non-dipole contribution in the form of asymmetric photoelectron angular distribution from the ionization of argon atoms and ions.

    • M. Ilchen
    • , G. Hartmann
    •  & M. Meyer

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Availability of intense hard X-ray pulses allows exploration of multiple ionization effects in heavier elements. Here, the authors measure the complex charge state distributions of xenon and found a reasonable agreement by comparing with the model including the relativistic and resonance effects.

    • Benedikt Rudek
    • , Koudai Toyota
    •  & Daniel Rolles

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The European X-ray free-electron laser (EuXFEL) in Hamburg is the first megahertz (MHz) repetition rate XFEL. Here the authors use lysozyme crystals and microcrystals from jack bean proteins and demonstrate that damage-free high quality data can be collected at a MHz repetition rate.

    • Marie Luise Grünbein
    • , Johan Bielecki
    •  & Ilme Schlichting

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Electron beam quality in accelerators is crucial for light source application. Here the authors demonstrate beam conditioning of laser plasma electrons thanks to a specific transport line enabling the control of divergence, energy, steering and dispersion and the application to observe undulator radiation.

    • T. André
    • , I. A. Andriyash
    •  & M.-E. Couprie

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Free electron laser beam profile characterization is usually performed separately from the actual measurements and this leads to considerable uncertainty in the results. Here the authors demonstrate the simultaneous measurement of the FEL beam profile with the experiment by using integrated gratings.

    • Michael Schneider
    • , Christian M. Günther
    •  & Stefan Eisebitt

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Short laser pulses of femtosecond time scales are in high demand in order to explore the fast electron dynamics in light-matter interactions. Here, the authors demonstrated the compression of free electron laser pulses in the extreme ultraviolet range by using a chirped pulse amplification technique.

    • David Gauthier
    • , Enrico Allaria
    •  & Giovanni De Ninno

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Short X-ray pulses from free-electron lasers enable coherent diffractive imaging of noncrystalline objects such as single molecules. Here, the authors reconstructing full image information from a single-shot diffraction pattern by using two sufficiently separated objects to act as references for each other.

    • Ben Leshem
    • , Rui Xu
    •  & Oren Raz

  • Article
    | Open Access

    X-ray free-electron laser is a power probe for materials, but it is challenging to measure the spectro-temporal characters of individual pulses. Here, De Ninno et al.implement an interferometric method allowing one to characterize and control the ultrashort XUV pulses seeded by a femtosecond laser.

    • Giovanni De Ninno
    • , David Gauthier
    •  & Matija Stupar

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Two-colour X-ray pulses from free-electron lasers can be used to probe ultrafast dynamics, but the total power is a fraction of the saturation power. Here, Marinelli et al. use twin electron bunches to reach full saturation power and increase the two-colour intensity by an order of magnitude at hard-X-ray energies.

    • A. Marinelli
    • , D. Ratner
    •  & Z. Huang

  • Article |

    Imaging live cells at nanometre resolution is challenging because radiation damage kills the cells during exposure. Here, the authors overcome this difficulty in a ‘diffraction before destruction’ experiment using an X-ray laser and record signal to 4 nm resolution on a free-flying cell.

    • Gijs van der Schot
    • , Martin Svenda
    •  & Tomas Ekeberg

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Few-femtosecond synchronization at free-electron lasers is key for nearly all experimental applications, stable operation and future light source development. Here, Schulz et al. demonstrate all-optical synchronization of the soft X-ray FEL FLASH to better than 30 fs and illustrate a pathway to sub-10 fs.

    • S. Schulz
    • , I. Grguraš
    •  & A. L. Cavalieri

  • Article |

    Electrons moving in strongly curved paths emit radiation that is used in free-electron laser designs. Here, the authors demonstrate the inverse force principle, where a laser light field is used in a compact experimental design to accelerate electrons to produce high-quality electron beams.

    • J. Duris
    • , P. Musumeci
    •  & V. Yakimenko

  • Article |

    Macromolecular complexes hold promise for future generations of drug delivery carriers, but probing their structures with high resolution is challenging. Here, the authors combine X-ray free-electron laser and synchrotron approaches to reveal the core-shell structure of RNA interference microsponges.

    • Marcus Gallagher-Jones
    • , Yoshitaka Bessho
    •  & Changyong Song

  • Article |

    Characterizing femtosecond X-ray pulses that vary from shot to shot is important for data interpretation. Here, Behrens et al.measure time-resolved lasing effects on the electron beam and extract the temporal profile of X-ray pulses using an X-band radiofrequency transverse deflector.

    • C. Behrens
    • , F.-J. Decker
    •  & J. Wu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Live cell imaging at high resolution is very challenging because cells die upon prolonged radiation exposure. Kimura et al.overcome this problem by using pulsed coherent X-ray diffraction to image live microbacterium in a nanofabricated liquid enclosure at resolution far exceeding optical methods.

    • Takashi Kimura
    • , Yasumasa Joti
    •  & Yoshinori Nishino

  • Article |

    To study the dynamics of materials and biological samples at ultrafast time scales it is beneficial to use two short laser pulses, ideally at different energies. Here, the authors demonstrate the generation of two femtosecond hard X-ray laser pulses in a free electron laser, with more than 30% energy separation.

    • Toru Hara
    • , Yuichi Inubushi
    •  & Tetsuya Ishikawa

  • Article |

    Free-electron lasers offer exciting new possibilities for X-ray studies on ultrafast timescales, but their shot-to-shot variability requires new diagnostic tools. Using a plasma switch cross-correlator, Riedel et al. present a single-shot online diagnostic to retrieve the duration of extreme ultraviolet pulses.

    • R. Riedel
    • , A. Al-Shemmary
    •  & F. Tavella

  • Article |

    X-ray free-electron lasers offer a wealth of possibilities for future diffraction studies, but variations in successive pulses mean the wavefront is not well defined. Rutishauseret al. use grating interferometry to characterize the wavefronts shot to shot, both in situand under operating conditions.

    • Simon Rutishauser
    • , Liubov Samoylova
    •  & Christian David

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