European XFEL

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European XFEL An international research facility in the Hamburg area of Germany, the European XFEL generates extremely intense laserlike X-rays for research.

Smaller, faster, more intense: The European XFEL, an X-ray laser research facility in the Hamburg metropolitan area, will open up areas of research that were previously inaccessible. Using the X-ray laser flashes of the European XFEL, scientists will be able to map the atomic details of viruses, decipher the molecular composition of cells, take three-dimensional images of the nanoworld, film chemical reactions, and study processes such as those occurring deep inside planets.

World record! Researchers used the European XFEL to create X-ray flashes that were not only extremely short, but also mo...
19/10/2026

World record! Researchers used the European XFEL to create X-ray flashes that were not only extremely short, but also more intense than previously possible.

The researchers focused the X-rays to an area roughly 100,000 times smaller than the cross-section of a typical human hair. This concentrated the X-ray light into a tiny but extremely powerful spot. The method could enable detailed studies of how electrons behave in atoms and molecules and in the long term could even allow to control electrons during chemical reactions. The team now published the results of the experiment, carried out in April 2026, in the journal Optica.

“This is a world record in intensity and fluence for a hard-X-ray attosecond pulse,” says Ichiro Inoue from The University of Tokyo / UTokyo, first author of the publication.

What's ✨magical✨ (almost) about this experiment? Find out here: https://www.xfel.eu/news_and_events/news/index_eng.html?openDirectAnchor=3103&two_columns=0

LEAPS community convenes at European XFELTwo-day plenary will bring together representatives of Europe’s leading photon ...
14/10/2026

LEAPS community convenes at European XFEL
Two-day plenary will bring together representatives of Europe’s leading photon science facilities

🇪🇺European XFEL will host the 9th LEAPS Plenary Meeting on 15–16 October 2026, bringing together around 100 representatives from Europe’s synchrotron radiation and free-electron laser community. LEAPS is short for „League of European Accelerator-based Photon Sources“. The meeting will offer updates on LEAPS activities and projects, networking opportunities and a guided tour of European XFEL. Participants will also celebrate the establishment of LEAPS AISBL—an international non-profit association under Belgian law that provides a formal framework for collaboration among the member facilities.

🔠A central event will be the panel discussion “Science in the age of AI—What do research ethics mean in 2026?”. Following a keynote by philosopher and governance consultant Frans Geraedts, the panel will examine how artificial intelligence is changing scientific discovery and what this means for research integrity, transparency, reproducibility, authorship, accountability and emerging regulation.

🤝To conclude the meeting, Thomas Feurer, Chairman of the European XFEL Management Board, will hand over the LEAPS chairperson’s baton to Bernd Rech, Scientific Director of Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie (HZB) and currently LEAPS vice chair.

Leaps Members

Sincrotró ALBA 
DESY 
Diamond Light Source 
HFML-FELIX
Elettra Sincrotrone Trieste 
European Synchrotron 
Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin 
Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf 
INFN 
Centre for Storage Ring Facilities, Department of Physics and Astronomy Aarhus University, 
MAX IV Laboratory
PSI Paul Scherrer Institut 
Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt 
SOLARIS synchrotron 
Synchrotron SOLEIL 
EuropeanXFEL

European XFEL receives the kununu Top Company award for 2026 - Employee reviews rank among the best in Germany has been...
14/10/2026

European XFEL receives the kununu Top Company award for 2026 - Employee reviews rank among the best in Germany

has been awarded the Top Company seal for 2026, based on independent reviews by employees. Only around five per cent of companies qualify for it. To be eligible, companies must meet several criteria, including an average rating of at least 3.8 out of 5 stars.

“I am delighted to receive this award. It shows that our staff experience and value our culture, our values and our diversity positively. At the same time, it sends a strong signal to potential applicants,” says Nicole Elleuche, Managing Director of European XFEL. “Our staff are the key to our success. With their commitment and expertise, they create the conditions for scientific excellence.”

German physicist Dr. Elke Plönjes-Palm and Polish physicist Prof. Jakub Szlachetko will become scientific directors at E...
06/10/2026

German physicist Dr. Elke Plönjes-Palm and Polish physicist Prof. Jakub Szlachetko will become scientific directors at European XFEL on 1 January 2027. Following a decision by the European XFEL Council, the research organization’s highest governing body, Plönjes-Palm will head Development and Instrumentation, Szlachetko will take responsibility for Operations and Data.

Find all details on www.xfel.eu and in link in Bio

26/09/2026

Lighthouse Science Slam: So unterhaltsam können Forschende Ihre Wissenschaft in einem 10-Minuten-Turbovortrag vorstellen!
Am Mittwoch, 30. September 2026, um 18 Uhr
kämpfen sechs Forschende aus Norddeutschland mit Ihren Vorträgen um den Titel. Jury ist das Publikum. Die Siegerin oder der Sieger erhält die begehrte Trophäe, den Lighthouse Laserpointer für den pointiertesten Vortrag. Der Eintritt für den spannenden Wettstreit der Wissenschaften ist frei, eine Anmeldung nicht notwendig. Die Veranstaltung wird in Deutscher Sprache stattfinden.
�In dieser Auflage geht es um eine wilde Themenmischung zwischen Teilchenphysik, Medizinforschung, Exoplaneten und Viren. Julia Nave vom Bernhard-Nocht-Institut für Tropenmedizin zum Beispiel, wird aufzeigen, was los ist, wenn das Schnitzel hustet und Sven Bollweg vom Institut für Experimentalphysik an der Universität Hamburg will Tipps geben, wie man 40 Millionen Küchenschwämme wieder los wird.

Mit dabei:

Sven Bollweg (Teilchenphysik, Institut für Experimentalphysik, Universität Hamburg)
Benoit Richard (Physik, European XFEL)
Julia Nave (Medizin, Bernhard-Nocht-Institut für Tropenmedizin, Hamburg)
Joana Wokittel (Exoplaneten, Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt School-Lab, Berlin)
Philipp Gadow (Teilchenphysik, DESY)
Annika Rammelt (Virenforschung, Leibniz Institut Virologie, Hamburg)

European XFEL Lighthouse, Holzkoppel 4, 22869 Schenefeld www.xfel.eu

Nächste Termine

🧬Mi. 07. Oktober 2026, 18 Uhr
Science Café: „Nature Engineered“, öffentliche Diskussionsrunde über gentechnisch veränderte Pflanzen.
Eintritt frei, um Anmeldung wird gebeten.

🧬Sa. 10. Oktober, 10.30 Uhr: Science Samstag mit interaktivem Vortrag: „Ab ins All! Wie wir zum Mars und noch weiter kommen.“ Mit Anne-Dorette Ziems.
Altersempfehlung: ab 12 Jahre. Anmeldung: Erforderlich

Lighthouse Science Slam: This is how entertainingly researchers can present their science in a 10-minute lightning talk!
On Wednesday, 30 September 2026, at 6 pm
six researchers from northern Germany will compete for the title with their talks. The audience acts as the jury. The winner will receive the coveted trophy, the Lighthouse laser pointer, for the most incisive presentation. Admission to this exciting scientific competition is free, and no registration is required. The event will be held in German.

🌳🔬 Unser Betriebsausflug zum European XFEL Unbezahlte Werbung aus voller Überzeugung: Wir waren wirklich begeistert!Die ...
26/09/2026

🌳🔬 Unser Betriebsausflug zum European XFEL

Unbezahlte Werbung aus voller Überzeugung: Wir waren wirklich begeistert!

Die kostenfreien Führungen bieten spannende Einblicke in die aktuelle Forschung und führen sogar bis in die unterirdische Experimentierhalle. Dazu gibt es ein modernes Besucherzentrum, das Wissenschaft verständlich und anschaulich vermittelt.
Besonders interessant war für uns natürlich die ökologische Seite: Herr Poppe hat uns durch die Außenanlagen geführt und spannende Einblicke in die Renaturierung des Geländes gegeben. Der Naturpfad mit seinen Informationstafeln kann übrigens jederzeit frei besucht werden.

Vielen Dank an das Team des European XFEL für die interessanten Einblicke und die tolle Führung!

Und weil ein Betriebsausflug hungrig macht, durfte ein Besuch bei Lindo's Grill natürlich nicht fehlen.

Put a drop of into a very hot pan and it can skitter across the surface on a cushion of vapour. This is known as the L...
24/09/2026

Put a drop of into a very hot pan and it can skitter across the surface on a cushion of vapour. This is known as the Leidenfrost effect. Now, scientists have observed a related phenomenon involving and an extremely hot surface–on a length scale of billionths of a metre (nanometres) and within billionths of a second (nanoseconds). The effect was discovered and investigated by an international team of researchers at the FXE instrument at European XFEL and could influence, for instance, laser processing, data storage technologies and catalysis. The results have been published in the Nature portfolio journal Communications Chemistry.

“This result is an example of how scientific research can take you in unexpected directions. What started as an experiment to study the phase transitions of amorphous ice revealed an anomalous interfacial energy transport that can be explained by the formation of an insulating vapour layer,” says Tobias Eklund, Ph.D. student at European XFEL and Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU).

“It’s amazing to see how can still us. The results are important for our understanding of water and ice in the atmosphere but also in outer space, where amorphous ice attaches to tiny dust grains,” says Katrin Amann-Winkel, Principle Investigator from JGU and group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Research. 

All details and link to publication on xfel.eu

17/09/2026

Collaboration of European XFEL with the Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH) is being strengthened

TUHH President and Vice President visit the campus

As part of the “BlueMat: Water-Driven Materials” Cluster of Excellence, European XFEL and the Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH) are already collaborating very successfully. Now, the is set to be further strengthened. This is the result of a visit by the President of the Hamburg University of Technology, Prof. Andreas Timm-Giel, and the Vice President for , Prof. Irina Smirnova, to the European XFEL campus.

The planned agreement covers topics such as conducting further joint research projects, collaboration in teaching and in supporting students, doctoral candidates, and early-career researchers, as well as mutual access to laboratory and experimental equipment and other facilities.

The visit to the X-ray laser research facility took place at the invitation of Prof. Thomas Feurer, Chairman of the Executive Board of the European XFEL.

Timm-Giel and Smirnova used their visit, among other things, to take a tour of the underground experimental hall. There, through technical discussions with the scientific directors Dr. Sakura Pascarelli and Prof. Dr. Serguei Molodtsov, as well as senior scientists from the various experimental stations, they gained an even deeper understanding of the facility.

One big dream of ultrafast science has been to watch changes in or on their natural timescale. 🔬Experimentally, this...
09/09/2026

One big dream of ultrafast science has been to watch changes in or on their natural timescale.

🔬Experimentally, this can be realized by taking two snapshots of the same nanoscale object only IS + (millionth of a billionth of a second) apart. A new capability of the European XFEL has recently enabled a big step towards the realization of this dream: the X-ray laser can produce subsequent flashes of two different colours, that are bright enough to image a particle twice within femtoseconds.

🔬However, a big challenge remained: no detector is fast enough to record the two snapshots separately—they end up on top of each other in a single image, comparable to a double-exposure photograph. Scientists now successfully employed two complementary methods to disentangle two diffraction patterns captured by the same X-ray detector. The results by an international team of researchers have been published their results in two separate articles in Nature Communications.

🔬While both take advantage of the different colours or photon energies, one method exploits the capability of the detector to discern energy levels for each individual pixel, while the other uses mathematical reconstructions. Its inventors call the latter method Dichography. One of the leading scientists compares the technique to an extreme high-speed camera: „To my knowledge, these are the fastest nanoscale movies ever recorded, if by movie we mean multiple frames of the same object,“ says Alessandro Colombo from the Department of Physics at ETH Zurich in Switzerland. 

🔬“This opens the door to observe rapid changes in nanoparticles, comparable to studies that have been possible with small molecules for some time now,” says Yevheniy Ovcharenko, scientist at the Small Quantum Systems (SQS) instrument at European XFEL and principal investigator of the study.

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