This beamline was brought to fruition by a number of collaborators, including HZDR, DESY and the UK. The UK’s contribution to HIBEF, funded jointly by STFC and EPSRC, was the CLF’s the DiPOLE-100X laser, which is due for its first user experiments in May.

Donna Strickland alongside Arthur Ashkin and Gérard Mourou were the 2018 Physics Nobel Prize Winners. This made Donna third woman in history to receive this accolade.

Tours of the XFEL Facility during the Signing Event. Image credit: European XFEL / Axel Heimken.

The prize was for their highly impactful in developing a technique that gave lasers that ability to produce high-intensity, ultrashort pulses. The results broke through massive barrio in laser technology and transformed whole sectors, including medical technology. Their techniques are now commonly used in laser surgery, among other disciplines.​

Donna Strickland said, “European XFEL is a very impressive research institute, I look forward to seeing the results of the research enabled by their high intensity X-ray pulses.”​

Dr Tom Butcher, Head of the CLF’s Centre for Advanced Laser Technology and Applications (CALTA), who ​attended the ceremony on behalf of the CLF said, “It was a privilege to show Prof. Strickland the DiPOLE-100X laser, which was designed and built by a multi-disciplinary team at the CLF. The DiPOLE laser is a key part of the HED instrument at XFEL and I look forward to the first User experiment in May, followed by many years of discovery”

Click here to Read the press release from the EU XFEL​

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