MIUR International Project EUROFEL (European Free Electron Lasers)

The project, initially called IRUVX-FEL (InfraRed to Ultraviolet and soft-X-ray FELs) and included in the ESFRI Roadmap since 2006, was then called EuroFEL, with the participation of, besides Italy, Germany, Sweden, France, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Turkey, Netherlands and Poland. Goal of the project is the construction of a distributed European infrastructure of Free-Electron Laser sources (FEL) operating from the infrared to the ultraviolet and x-rays spectral region. FEL sources as FERMI and SPARC in Italy, FLASH and XFEL in Germany, SwissFEL in Switzerland, make possible to address the study of ultra-fast phenomena, of the order of 10-100 femtoseconds, with a concentration of photons (brightness) nine orders of magnitude higher than those available at the most modern third generation synchrotrons. Thanks to the unique properties of the FEL light, out-of-equilibrium states of matter from the physical, chemical and biological point of view can be thoroughly investigated. Coherent and pump-and-probe imaging techniques are used to study the geometric structure of matter at the atomic scale. In case of seeded FEL, as FERMI, the sample can be illuminated with both the light of the seed laser and that generated by the FEL process. In alternative, two different FEL wavelengths generated by two different pulses of the seed laser or with two different openings setting of the undulator chain and delayed with respect to one another can be provided to the users to perform pump-and-probe experiments. In this way, detailed information on the evolution of all transients or out-of-equilibrium phenomena in matter can be obtained.

Other Italian public research institutions involved

• INFN - Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati.
• CNR - Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Istituto IOM-CNR and Istituto ISM-CNR.
• ENEA - Ente per le Nuove tecnologie, l'Energia e l'Ambiente, Frascati.

Strategic objectives

Elettra Sincrotrone Trieste has developed the seeded FERMI light source and, after the initial commissioning phase, opened its beamlines to the international users community. FERMI offers unique reproducibility and stability of the FEL light pulse intensity, wavelength and line width and the control of their main properties, as wavelength, duration, polarization and synchronization with an external laser. It offers to the scientific community two different lasers, FEL-1, for wavelengths down to 20 nm and FEL-2, for wavelengths down to 4 nm in the first harmonic. The beamlines and experimental stations opens unique opportunities to perform ultrafast imaging experiments, soft X-ray microscopy, time-resolved spectroscopy of mesoscopic dynamics, elastic scattering of matter under extreme conditions, atomic and molecular physics, spectroscopy of the reaction intermediate products, spectroscopy of clusters and nanoparticles, processing and imaging of clusters and nanoparticles in the gas phase, TeraHertz spectroscopy, inelastic scattering from liquid and chaotic systems. The continuous upgrade programme driven by the requirements of the most prestigious international research groups and the proficuous collaboration between accelerator and beamlines scientists assure the exceptionality of FERMI in the international FEL sources landscape.