Accelerators 2018

is with great pleasure and honour that I report the progress
that was made in 2018, under the leadership of my predecessor
Reinhard Brinkmann, whom I succeeded as director of
the Accelerator Division as of 1 February 2019.
For the European XFEL X-ray laser, DESY continued its
responsibility for operating the 2.1 km long superconducting
linear accelerator driving the free-electron laser (FEL). In
2017, the accelerator complex was swiftly commissioned and
the first hard X-ray self-amplified spontaneous emission
(SASE) FEL beams were provided to users at the SASE1
beamline. In 2018, the SASE1 beamline performance was
further improved and user experiments commenced, operation
of the second and third X-ray beamlines (SASE2 and SASE3)
started, and the first operation of all three sources in parallel
was demonstrated. This unique feature of simultaneous
operation of three beamlines and full flexibility of pulse
selection “à la carte” provides the users with tremendous
options for tailoring the X-ray radiation pulses to the needs of
their experiments. In July 2018, after installation and commissioning
of the last two radio frequency (RF) stations of the
accelerator and optimisation of all 24 stations, electrons were
accelerated to the design energy of 17.5 GeV. While standard
operation is typically with 300 bunches per RF pulse, i. e.
3000 bunches per second, the operating team increased the
beam intensity to the full design value of 27 000 bunches per
second in November. Bringing such a novel, complex facility
up to its design performance in such a short time is truly an
amazing achievement, and is a testimony to the expertise and
dedication of all the groups of DESY’s Accelerator Division
joining forces with the operating teams from European XFEL.
We are looking forward to exciting new science results in the
coming years!