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 participation of, besides Italy, Germany, Sweden, France, United Kingdom, Switzerland and Poland. EUROFEL foresees the construction of a distributed European infrastructure of Fee-Electron Laser sources (FEL) operating in the ultraviolet to soft X rays spectral region. The estimated cost ranges from 1.2 to 1.6 billion Euro, depending on the number of new sources implemented.
Compared to synchrotron light sources, FEL sources as FLASH in Hamburg, FERMI
FEL-1 and FEL-2 in Trieste, SPARC in Frascati and those under construction, as SwissFEL in Villigen, 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 the what available at the most modern third generation synchrotron radiation accelerators. 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/or pump-and-probe imaging techniques are used to study the geometric structure of matter at the atomic scale. The sample is 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. With the pump-and-probe technique the first beam generates a transient phenomenon on the sample to be studied and the second is used to measure its effects. 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 is gradually opening its beamlines to international users. FERMI is unique in reproducibility and stability of the FEL light pulse intensity, wavelength and line width. 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, both with full polarization control. The beamlines and experimental stations in operation or under commissioning offer the possibility 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, etc.