The 5th EuroFEL Newsletter, giving a round-up of FEL-related projects in Europe as well as further afield, has just been published and can be downloaded from the following website.

An Oxford-led team has created solid density plasma with a temperature of 2 million degrees Kelvin using the LCLS. For further details please see the SLAC press release.

The Nature article on “Creation and diagnosis of a solid-density plasma with an X-ray free-electron laser” can be found on the Nature website.

Oxford University have released a press release that can be found on their website.

Scientists working at SLAC have created the first atomic inner-shell X-ray laser at 1.46 nm pumped by the LCLS free electron laser. For further details please see the SLAC press release.

The Nature article on “Atomic inner-shell X-ray laser at 1.46 nanometres pumped by an X-ray free-electron laser” can be found on the Nature website.

Jon Marangos has provided his comments in an article “Laser science: Even harder X-rays”. The article can be found on the Nature website.

First call for experiment proposals at the FERMI@Elettra facility for 1 July to 30 Decemeber 2012. The deadline for proposals is 31 March 2012. For further details please visit the website

First scanning of near field optical images of oesophageal cancer using the InfraRed Free Electron Laser (IRFEL) at ALICE.  More information can be found at the following website

The STFC has an operational IR FEL on the ALICE accelerator which additionally generates pulsed THz radiation – both unique sources in the UK – and is inviting proposals for R&D projects in the period from April to August 2012.

Details of the call for proposals and a pro forma application can be downloaded from the ASTeC website.

Parameters for each of the photon sources can also be accessed on the ASTeC website. For FEL and for THz.

The latest generation of free electron laser light sources is opening up a whole range of exciting new scientific opportunities in the physical and life sciences – science opportunities that exploit the extremely short pulses and high photon flux that such facilities alone can provide. While the UK is not currently able to propose such a facility of our own, a future UK-based light source of this type would be an exciting development and is one of a number of future opportunities that STFC is examining. UK researchers are becoming increasingly active in this science and it is important that we maintain contact with the international FEL community and aware of developments. I hope the UK FEL forum is able to help do this, while also supporting and building the growing community interest that we see in this area.

The European XFEL Users’ Meeting 2012 is offering financial contributions to young scientists.  The deadline for applications is 6 January 2012.  For further details, including registration, please visit the 2012 European XFEL Users’ Meeting website

For years, the free-electron laser (FEL) FLASH at DESY has been generating X-ray laser light for an ever increasing user community. The construction started on 20 Sept. 2011 for the next expansion stage FLASH II, with the aim to serve more users and at the same time apply the most recent developments of FEL technology.More