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X-ray Free-Electron Laser
A laser that emits a beam of coherent electromagnetic radiation in the X-ray regime (at shorter wavelengths than the visible lights), using a relativistic beam of free-electrons. The luminosity can reach a billion times that created in the large synchrotron radiation facility, SPring-8. Acronym for X-ray Free-Electron Laser, XFEL, is also used.
XFEL has characteristics of both a radiation and a laser (whose waves are coherent), and that enables detailed and continuous microscopic views of atoms and molecules that are rapidly changing shapes. This allows observations of very fast-reacting substances. Therefore, XFEL is expected to make drug discovery more efficient, and will have many other innovative applications. In Japan the Riken started the construction of a XFEL facility in Harima Science Garden City in 2006. Similar projects are underway in the Europe (Germany) and the U.S. as well. The essential technologies necessary for the XFEL are derived from the research and development for the Linear Collider.
XFEL has characteristics of both a radiation and a laser (whose waves are coherent), and that enables detailed and continuous microscopic views of atoms and molecules that are rapidly changing shapes. This allows observations of very fast-reacting substances. Therefore, XFEL is expected to make drug discovery more efficient, and will have many other innovative applications. In Japan the Riken started the construction of a XFEL facility in Harima Science Garden City in 2006. Similar projects are underway in the Europe (Germany) and the U.S. as well. The essential technologies necessary for the XFEL are derived from the research and development for the Linear Collider.
