X-ray laser machine is a billion times brighter than today's machines

European countries put into operation the world's most powerful X-ray laser capable of taking atomic images.

The world's most powerful X-ray laser has officially come into operation in Hamburg, Germany, BBC reported on September 1. With a construction cost of more than 1.2 billion USD, the device called European X-ray Free Electron Laser (XFEL) will be used to study the detailed structure of atoms.

The way the machine shines light on a target allows for instantaneous capture of the moment a chemical bond is formed or broken, the scientists say. The team hopes the XFEL will help them make fundamental discoveries that could lead to new treatments and materials.

The machine is located 40m below the city of Hamburg.

The machine is a superconducting linear accelerator located in a 3.4-kilometer-long tunnel complex 40 meters below the city of Hamburg and the nearby town of Schenefeld. XFEL works by accelerating clusters of electrons to near the speed of light, before launching them down a zigzag ramp controlled by a system of magnets called a undulator.

As the electrons turn, they emit a flash of X-rays, and the particles interact with this radiation, packing themselves together even more tightly. Their compact state not only enhances the brightness, but also gives them coherence. Essentially, the X-rays become uniform and have the characteristics of laser light.

The light beam will shine through and reveal everything in its path at the atomic level, including protein molecules in the human body or catalysts used to produce industrial chemicals.

Many countries around the world use circular machines called synchrotrons to do the same thing. But the light emitted by XFELs is a billion times brighter than those devices. What makes XFELs different is that they produce ultra-fast bursts of light. They fire off a trillion X-ray photons in a burst that lasts just 50 femtoseconds (0.000,000,000,000.05 seconds) and can repeat 27,000 times a second.

"The big hope with XFEL is that we can image a single particle. You just put a protein complex or a virus in the light. The biological entity will emit photons so you can image its shape," said Professor Elspeth Garman of the University of Oxford, UK, a member of the committee that arranged the experiment in Hamburg.

XFEL will begin operations under the coordination of scientists from 11 consortium member countries. Germany not only hosts the XFEL, but also provides the majority of the funding and technology. The other member countries are Russia, Denmark, France, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.

According to Khoahoc.tv