The European XFEL (European X-ray Free Electron Laser, Eu-XFEL) is the world's largest (3.4 km long) Free Electron Laser, generating ultra-short X-ray pulses with a brightness a billion times greater than the best conventional X-ray sources. Allows to conduct the most accurate measurements of the fastest processes observed by mankind. Eu-XFEL opens up previously unattainable research areas.

Eu-XFEL Laboratory

The European X-ray Free Electron Laser (EuXFEL) Laboratory (https://xfel.eu/) is one of the largest scientific projects currently underway in the world and has been ranked by the European Strategic Forum for Research Infrastructure (ESFRI, https://www.esfri.eu/) as one of Europe's premier research facilities. EuXFEL's unique research capabilities attract top scientists from around the world and foster the realization of ambitious scientific challenges. Research conducted at EuXFEL contributes to the creation of new knowledge in a wide range of scientific disciplines and technologies that affect our daily lives, including medicine, pharmacology, chemistry, materials science, nanotechnology, energy and electronics.

New research capabilities

Seven state-of-the-art scientific instruments called research stations are currently being made available to scientists conducting research at EuXFEL. Each station is dedicated to a specific research topic and a specific type of experiment. The EuXFEL research stations are permanently assigned to three XFEL radiation sources with different parameters defining three experimental beamlines: SASE1 and SASE2 operating in the hard X-ray range (with photon energies from 3 to 25 keV), and SASE 3 for soft X-ray generation in the range from 260 eV to 3000 eV.

Poland's participation in EuXFEL

The construction, maintenance and management of the European Free Electron Laser has been entrusted to the non-profit European XFEL GmbH (a company under German commercial law with limited liability) gathering international shareholders. The supervisory body of the company is the European XFEL Council. At present, the company's members and partners in the project are: Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Russia, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland, as well as the United Kingdom. The cost of building and commissioning the facility was set at more than one billion euros (€1.22 billion according to a 2005 cost estimate), of which Germany pledged to cover 58% of the cost and Russia another 27%. The rest of the cost was covered by shares in the 1-3% range belonging to the rest of the partners, including Poland. The shareholder representing Poland is the National Centre for Nuclear Research. The size of the Polish share is currently 2.13%.

In recent years, there has been a sharp increase in the number of measurement hours attributed to Polish users, from around 25 hours in 2018-2021 to 116 hours in 2023 and more than 200 hours in 2024. This is a very big success for Polish EuXFEL users. At the same time, there has been a large increase in the total number of available measurement hours from around 2,000 hours in 2020 to 8640 hours in 2023.

Polish XFEL project - "Support to Polish users of EuXFEL - Supervision II (2022-26)".

The aim of the project is to realise ownership functions in the European X-ray Free Electron Laser (XFEL) and to support the Polish scientific community in its use as one of the priority research instruments necessary for the realisation of innovative scientific research. The implementation of the project is based on the idea of knowledge sharing between experienced users of XFEL sources and scientists preparing to use them. The result of the project will be the development of scientific competencies of Polish scientists in the field of research using XFEL.

The project is implemented by the Consortium ‘Network of XFEL Centres of Excellence’ composed of:

1. National Centre for Nuclear Research - consortium leader, CD XFEL NCBJ
2. Institute of Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, CD XFEL IF PAN
3. University of Warsaw - Faculty of Chemistry, CD XFEL UW
4. Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań - Faculty of Physics, CD XFEL UAM

The XFEL Centres of Excellence Network (CD XFEL) was established to provide substantive and organisational support to the Polish research community in the use of the European Free Electron Laser (EuXFEL). The unique CD XFEL research laboratories bring together scientists with extensive experience in XFEL research, whose knowledge and commitment provides support for new Polish users of this infrastructure. For the purposes of the CD XFEL project, they also make available their research infrastructure, including equipment purchased with funds from a grant from the Ministry of Science and Higher Education.

Project completion date: 22.12.2022 r. - 31.12.2026 r.

Funding source: Ministry of Science and Higher Education

Project name "Support for Polish users of EuXFEL - Supervision II (2022-26)".

Programme name: "Support for the participation of Polish scientific teams in international research infrastructure projects".

Agreement no: 2022/WK/13

Grant amount: PLN 81,005,680.04 (of which PLN 70,465,960.23 is the cost of paying the membership fee for EuXFEL GmbH operational purposes)

NCBJ grant: 2,660,494.81 PLN

Administrative head of the project: Dagmara Milewska, M.Sc. (dagmara.milewska@ncbj.gov.pl), Task name I: "Implementation of XFEL ownership functions by NCBJ".

Scientific head of the project: Ryszard Sobierajski, PhD, Prof. IF PAN (sobieraj@ifpan.edu.pl)

Task coordinator: Dr. Eng. Adam Padee (adam.padee@ncbj.gov.pl), Task name IIG: "User support for data processing technologies in EuXFEL".

Official website of the project: www.ifpan.edu.pl/cd-xfel

Contact: cd-xfel@ifpan.edu.pl

Patrons and partners