XFEL: European XFEL scientists awarded FEL Prize

Two physicists at European XFEL, Jiawei Yan and Svitozar Serkez, have been awarded the Young Investigator FEL Prize at the FEL2022 conference, the 40^th International Free Electron Laser conference, held in Trieste, Italy. The prestigious award is given for achievements in and contributions to Free Electron Laser (FEL) science by a researcher under the age of 35 years. It has had 16 recipients since its establishment in 2008.

Both recipients are members of the FEL Physics group of the European XFEL, led by Gianluca Geloni:

Jiawei Yan works on advanced FEL schemes, electron beam dynamics, and the application of machine learning techniques to facilitate the design and operation of XFELs.

Svitozar Serkez works on improving various properties of FEL radiation, developing new generation schemes and also devising new means for diagnosing properties of the generated FEL light.

They received these prizes alongside a third recipient, Zhen Zhang, from the Stanford Linear Accelerator Centre (SLAC).

“I feel privileged to have the experience of working with excellent colleagues around the world,” says Yan. “It is always fascinating to develop new infrastructure for XFELs, and I’m grateful that our work can be recognized in this way.”

Yan’s research focuses on what are known as seeded FELs, which use an external laser to improve the coherence of FEL radiation. He and his collaborators proposed and demonstrated a way to dramatically reduce the power requirements of these external lasers, paving the way for an FEL with millions of pulses per second, producing high-quality, coherent laser light. Yan has also worked on creating FEL light with unusual properties, known as twisted light, that can be used for new kinds of spectroscopy, to probe the behavior of atoms and molecules.

His fellow prize-winner Svitozar Serkez says: “I feel as if I’m standing on shoulders of giants: the FEL community and colleagues at DESY and European XFEL who built and operate such a masterpiece. I also feel lucky to work with enthusiastic teams of the SQS and SCS instruments who made many R&D studies possible.”

Svitozar and collaborators both from DESY and European XFEL have demonstrated that the European XFEL can generate ultra-short pulses – shorter than one quadrillionth of a second. He also strongly contributed in development and commissioning of two-color operation for the same beamline. Such operation creates two consecutive bright and short X-ray pulses of different wavelengths instead of just one, enabling a large range of scientific applications such as probing motion of nuclei and electrons in small quantum systems. Svitozar was also involved in efforts to improve the brilliance of the generated radiation, among many other things.

“Both Jiawei and Svitozar are active and well-known members of the XFEL community, whose scientific expertise is widely recognized,” says Serguei Molodtsov. Scientific Director at the European XFEL. “We look forward to the new research insights that will be facilitated by their contributions.”

Find out more about the 2022 Young Investigator FEL Prize here.  

 

Selected publications:

J. Yan et al., Self-Amplification of Coherent Energy Modulation in Seeded Free-Electron Lasers, Phys. Rev. Lett. 126, 084801 (2021). (https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.126.084801)

J. Yan et al., First observation of laser–beam interaction in a dipole magnet. Advanced Photonics, 3, 045003 (2021). (https://doi.org/10.1117/1.AP.3.4.045003)

J. Yan and G. Geloni. Self-Seeded Free-Electron Lasers with Orbital Angular Momentum. arXiv preprint, arXiv:2208.09081 (2022). (https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2208.09081)

S. Serkez et al., Opportunities for Two-Color Experiments in the Soft X-Ray Regime at the European XFEL, Applied Sciences 10, 8 (2020). (https://doi.org/10.3390/app10082728)

S. Serkez, Self-Seeding XFELs: Operation Principle and Challenges, Synchrotron Radiation News 29, 10 (2016). (https://doi.org/10.1080/08940886.2016.1174037)

S. Serkez, et al. “Overview of Options for Generating High-Brightness Attosecond x-Ray Pulses at Free-Electron Lasers and Applications at the European XFEL”, Journal of Optics 20, 024005 (2018). (https://doi.org/10.1088/2040-8986/aa9f4f)

 

Science contact:

Gianluca Geloni
Tel: +49-40-8998-5450
E-mail: gianluca.geloni@xfel.eu