Photon Science 2022

Dear Colleagues and Friends of DESY Photon Science, During the last three years we learned how to carry out experiments under the conditions of a pandemic in a safe and effective manner. I am very grateful to all DESY staff and the entire user community for their efforts to keep our science programs running and to adapt to our safety concepts. However, with the aggression of Russia against Ukraine, the geopolitical and economic situation has changed so dramatically that this might affect DESY’s activities much more than the pandemic. Energy costs went up by large factors, such as it will not be possible to operate our facilities for the complete scheduled times for the next years without additional support by our funding bodies. In the meantime, the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) has announced special crisis funds to cushion the rise in energy prices and there is some hope that this threat can be brought under control. Neverthe- Despite these challenging circumstances, user operation at the synchrotron radiation source PETRA III was running quite smoothly with an availability of more than 98%. After officially finishing the PETRA III extension project in 2021, the design and construction of the remaining free undulator beamlines is still ongoing. Also, during this year for the first time we carried out pilot studies for new access modes. Users had the opportunity to submit proposals for which the immediate socio-economic impact in addition to scientific excellence was evaluated for allocating beamtime. In addition, a call for targeted challenge-driven proposals for molecular water science in the frame of the Center for Molecular Water Science (CMWS) was issued allowing users to apply for cooperative research projects using several different beamlines for a period of two years. After extensive discussion of the science case and the beamline portfolio with the user community and DESY advisory bodies, the preparation of the proposal for the PETRA IV project, the upgrade of PETRA III, was continuously pushed forward in 2022. Harald Reichert, the former ESRF director for physical sciences, has taken over the project lead. Riccardo Bartolini is acting as deputy project head and is leading the accelerator part of the project. In September, the very successful kickoff meeting for the PETRA IV project took place. The present timeline foresees to finalise the project proposal in the first quarter of 2023 and to present a full ‘Technical Design Report’ (TDR) by the end of 2023. The main goal of PETRA IV will be to deliver beams with unprecedented brightness in the hard X-ray regime. In addition, in a so called ‘transformation project’, DESY will also introduce new modes for the user access. The aim of this transformation is to provide more services to nonexpert synchrotron radiation users starting from the planning of the experiment all the way through to the final data evaluation. This should come with a ‘rolling access’ scheme for faster access for both academic and industrial users during the whole year, which will be explored already at PETRA III in a pilot-phase. Most of the year 2022, the free-electron laser FLASH was in shutdown for the first phase of the upgrade project FLASH2020+. In this time, two of the superconducting modules of the linear accelerator were replaced by ones with higher gradients. This should bring FLASH up to an electron energy of 1.35 GeV, enabling the produced light beams to cover the nitrogen K-edge with the first harmonic and all L-edges of the transition metals with the third harmonic. Despite the pandemic and supply chain issues, the shutdown work could be completed in time and user operation could start in November as planned. The second upgrade phase of the project is scheduled for mid 2024 to mid 2025. It will comprise the installation of tunable helical undulators and external seeding in FLASH1. Since the beginning of October, Markus Gühr, former Professor at the University Potsdam, has taken over the scientific leadership of the FLASH facility. In April, the new building for the Center for X-ray and Nano-Science (CXNS) was inaugurated in presence of three German research ministers as well as other distinguished guests. This new office and laboratory building also houses the DESY outstation of Hereon, the Ruprecht-Haensel- Laboratory of the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel (CAU Kiel), and colleagues from the Hamburg University of Technology (TU Hamburg) and the Leibniz-Institut für Kristallzüchtung (IKZ) in Berlin. Scientists from DESY are contributing to three major user consortia at European XFEL. The SFX station has already been very productive for several years. Meanwhile, also the hRIXS and HiBEF experimental stations have started regular operation and are producing first exciting results. Unfortunately, 2022 turned out to be even more difficult than the years before due to a significant change in the geopolitical and economic situation. Therefore, I would like to sincerely thank all who have contributed to excellent science in many ways for their commitment. Certainly, we still have 2-3 difficult years ahead of us, but I hope that we will manage them together in such a way that our science programs and the development of our young scientists and engineers are not seriously compromised.