X-ray spectroscopy at synchrotron light sources has emerged as one of the most powerful tools available worldwide for the characterization of the chemical, atomic, and electronic properties of materials. While existing x-ray spectrometers provide either excellent energy resolution at low efficiency or moderate energy resolution at high efficiency, magnetic microcalorimeters (MMCs) might be a...
During pre-production of the ITk strips tracking detector for the upcoming ATLAS upgrade a certain number of modules have been found to have sensor cracks after thermal cycling when being loaded on the final support structures.
A number of materials and different types of adhesive used in the complete assembly create localized stress points when cooled. This leads to cracks in the silicon at...
We present a synthetic Shadowgraphy Plugin for the particle-in-cell code PIConGPU. By time-integrating electric and magnetic fields and propagating them onto a screen in the far field with Fourier methods, shadowgram images equivalent to experimental measurements can be produced.
Our in-situ plugin now enables recording few-cycle probe pulses after they traverse plasma structures of e.g....
The EIC-Pathfinder project TWAC (Terahertz Wave Accelerating Cavity) aims to build a prototype accelerator demonstrating the feasibility of a compact machine based on THz-driven accelerating structures for the purpose of research, medical and industrial applications. The prototype should deliver low-energy, ultrashort and high peak current electron bunches (~10 MeV, femtosecond scale and ~1...
The POEMMA Balloon with Radio is a balloon experiment built on the designs tested in the previous EUSO missions. It is set to comprise an optical telescope with a fluorescence camera, a Cherenkov camera and radio instruments. These detectors are expected to measure UHECRs, high altitude horizontal air showers and any possible neutrino events. Measurements of potential Radio Frequency...
Fiber laser systems are reputed for being able to provide emission at high average powers while keeping nearly diffraction-limited beam quality. However, achieving pulsed operation with high peak-powers has traditionally been a challenge due to the small confinement of the light in the fiber causing the onset of nonlinear effects. A successful strategy to overcome these limitations is the...
Laser-plasma acceleration (LPA) is a promising technology for a future compact accelerator. However, current Ti:Sapphire laser technology typically supports few-hertz repetition rates, with scaling to higher rates being challenging. High energy, kHz-level Yb-based laser systems have longer, sub-picosecond pulses. After nonlinear spectral broadening in a multipass cell, these pulses can be...
Plasma-wakefield accelerators represent an exciting pathway to gigavolt-per-metre accelerating gradients that could significantly decrease the size and cost of the high-energy electron accelerators required for future particle-collider and photon-science facilities. FLASHForward (DESY) uses electron bunches from the FLASH linac with the aim of demonstrating reproducible, high-repetition-rate...
Modern scientific experiments often generate large amounts of data, posing challenges for real-time processing and analysis. ASAPO, a high-performance streaming framework developed at DESY, addresses these challenges by providing a robust solution for online and offline data processing. Leveraging TCP/IP and RDMA over Ethernet and Infiniband, ASAPO facilitates high-bandwidth communication...
The dCache project provides open-source software deployed internationally to satisfy ever more demanding storage requirements. Its multifaceted approach supports different use cases with the same storage, from high throughput data ingest, data sharing over wide area networks, efficient access from HPC clusters, and long-term data persistence on tertiary storage. Though it was initially...
For over two decades, dCache.ORG has provided software used at more than 80 sites worldwide, providing reliable services for WLCG experiments and others. This can be achieved only with a well-established process from a whiteboard, where ideas are created through packages installed on the production systems. Since early 2013, we have moved to git as our source code management system and to...
Each year, DESY offers students from around the world the opportunity to participate in a two-month program, working on various projects within different research groups. This year, the Scientific Computing group offered three projects focused on data challenges. The first project involved redesigning a monitoring dashboard for ASAP::O, a data streaming platform that manages the transfer of...
Increasing data rates in photon science experiments mean that there is demand to perform data reduction close to the detector, to reduce the workload on later stages of data processing, transfer and storage. We have developed machine-learning based methods for reducing data in serial crystallography experiments by rejecting bad images. Additionally, we implemented the algorithm on CPU, GPU and...
A critical component in generating and manipulating high-energy beams in plasma-wakefield accelerators is a reliable, well-characterized, and optimized plasma source with high discharge rates and stability. To meet these requirements, the ATHENA Discharge Development and Characterization Experiment (ADVANCE) laboratory has been established at DESY. The lab's mission is to develop advanced...
Helical targets [1] allow us to focus and post-accelerate a proton beam generated by Target Normal Sheath Acceleration (TNSA) [2]. This scheme uses the discharge current [3] generated by the charge ejection from the laser-plasma interaction. The current will be driven through a conducting helical coil (HC), generating a localised electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) inside the coil which will focus,...
Recent promising results from inertial fusion energy (IFE) facilities, such as the National Ignition Facility in the USA, have sparked a strong interest in IFE technologies. Because it is a multiscaled problem from a simulation standpoint, significant effort is required to accurately model the dense plasmas on various length and time scales, which is crucial for developing IFE technology. One...
Laser-plasma accelerators (LPAs) are compact accelerators with field gradients that are approximately 3 orders of magnitude higher than RF-based machines, which allows for very compact accelerators. LPAs have matured from proof-of principle experiments to accelerators that can reproducibly generate ultrashort high-brightness electron bunches. Here we will discuss a first combination of LPAs...
Reinforcement learning - a subfield of machine learning - has recently demonstrated great success in solving games. This triggered an increased interest in many fields toward applying reinforcement learning to the control of real-world systems, including self-driving cars and agile robotic systems. Particle accelerators were no exception in this regard, and thus numerous studies have been...
Recent advancements in free electron lasing at UV wavelengths have been been demonstrated using the COXINEL beamline driven by HZDR plasma accelerator in a seeded configuration. To optimize FEL radiation, it is crucial to address the complex, multivariate parameters involved in laser-plasma acceleration, electron beam transport, and radiation generation. These challenges can be understood by...
High-brightness photoinjectors - a development triggered by the demands of x-ray free-electron lasers (FELs) - form excellent electron sources for ultrafast electron diffraction experiments at MeV energies (MeV UED) as well. Compared to keV UED, MeV beam energies enable higher bunch charges, higher coherence, and better time resolution. Within the Helmholtz Society, three experiments either...
The Metrology Light Source (MLS) is a compact double-bend achromat lattice that operates at an energy of 630 MeV and produces synchrotron radiation in the terahertz to the extreme UV spectral range for metrology and radiometric applications. An upgraded light source MLS II has been developed as an 800 MeV electron storage ring with flexible operating modes, including a standard user mode for...
All-optical High-energy X-ray (HEX) beam sources based on Inverse Compton scattering constitute a promising alternative to conventional X-ray sources due to their compactness and tunability. These X-rays are generated through collision between a laser pulse and relativistic electron beams produced by a laser-plasma accelerator. Although a low HEX bandwidth is required for many applications,...
PETRA IV, a low-emittance fourth-generation light source, is the upcoming flagship project of DESY. Stringent stability of the electron beam orbit in the ring will be required to achieve a diffraction-limited photon beam quality. A fast orbit feedback system is being modelled and designed. An update on the status of the development is presented.
With the rapid progress of versatile ultrafast x-ray spectroscopy techniques and more sophisticated data analysis tools, accurate single-pulse information on the arrival time, duration, and shape of x-ray and XUV pulses becomes essential. Here, we demonstrate that XUV pulses can be converted into terahertz electromagnetic pulses. We observe that the duration, arrival time, and energy of each...
The heavy-ion synchrotron SIS100 will be at the heart of FAIR. This impressive new machine with a circumference of 1084 m and a maximum magnetic rigidity of 100 Tm (superconducting magnets), will provide very high intensities of ultra-relativistic heavy highly charged ion beams. In order to further improve the quality of these ion beams, the SIS100 laser cooling facility will be constructed....
Laser-plasma accelerators (LPAs), offering an enormous accelerating gradient of GV/m, have garnered significant attention as a promising avenue to a variety of advanced applications from tabletop radiation sources to high-energy compact accelerators. Here, we present a collection of open-source simulation tools to further our understanding and support experiments on plasma acceleration. In...
