Conférence en Provence : Light-Matter Interactions at Nanoscale

Smaller, faster, more intense: The X-Ray Free Electron Lasers (XFEL’s) are opening up areas of research that were previously inaccessible. Using the X-ray flashes of XFEL’s, scientists are able to map the atomic details of viruses, decipher the molecular composition of cells, take three-dimensional images of the nanoworld, film chemical reactions, and study processes such as those occurring deep inside planets.
To generate the X-ray flashes, bunches of electrons are first accelerated to high energies and then directed through special arrangements of magnets (undulators). In the process, the particles emit radiation that is increasingly amplified until an extremely short and intense X-ray flash is finally created.

The world-unique feature of XFEL’s is the possibility to provide up to hundreds of thousands ultra-short flashes (200 as – 100 fs) that makes these facilities particular suitable for time-resolved X-ray absorption, photoemission, (resonance) inelastic X-ray scattering as well as diffraction and imaging studies in the range of moderate and hard X-ray photons.

In this lecture main areas of nanoscale application will be presented taking examples of experiments done at the European XFEL in Hamburg.

Since 2010 Serguei Molodtsov is Scientific Director of the European XFEL. After receiving his diploma in physics in 1984 at the Leningrad State University, he obtained 1987 his PhD on “Photoemission Study of Electron-Phonon Scattering in Insulators”. After being research associate at the Leningrad State University and Alexander-von-Humboldt fellow at the Free University Berlin, he moved in 1997 to the Institut für Oberflächen- und Mikrostrukturphysik at the Technical University in Dresden and became there Associate Professor in 2000. In 2001 he became Heard of the Russian-German Laboratory at BESSY in Berlin. Since 2013 Serguei Molodtsov holds also a W3 Professorship at the Technical University in Freiberg. He is Honorary Professor at the Technical University in Dresden.