Time resolved structural studies – Synergy and complementarity between ESRF and European XFEL

A two-day workshop held at the ESRF campus in Grenoble on March 4-5, 2019, is jointly co-organized by the European XFEL and ESRF. The workshop will be focused on the science, instrumentation and the user communities of two complementary time-resolved instruments: the Femtosecond X-ray Experiments (FXE) instrument of the European XFEL and the ID09 beamline for structural dynamics of the ESRF. At both instruments, time-resolved experiments are conducted using the laser pump / X-ray probe techniques with single X-ray pulses in order to reach the ultimate temporal resolution of the respective X-ray sources. The ultrashort 10-100 fs temporal resolution at FXE gives access to the fundamental time-scales in chemistry and biochemistry. Thus the primary steps in chemical and biochemical reactions like bond breakage/formation, electron transfer and coherent motions can be resolved in time and in space by diffraction, scattering and spectroscopic techniques. The longer 100 ps synchrotron pulses, on the other hand, are perfect for probing the ensuing cascade of intermediate structures, from 100 ps to 1 ms at higher spatial resolution and without X-ray induced degradation of the sample. The primary goal of the workshop is to discuss the complementarity of the two instruments, to share the technology and to evaluate the future needs of the joint user communities. Main Topics: photochemical reactions in solution, structural dynamics of proteins, protein serial crystallography, ultrafast phenomena in soft matter, ultrafast surface deformations in solids, dynamic pulse compression, time-resolved Wide-Angle X-ray Scattering, X-ray emission spectroscopy, theory.