HILITE – Commissioning results and upcoming beam time at FLASH 2020

Currently operated laser systems emitting pulses with high photon energy or high photon flux give access to K-shell electrons. Typically, atomic or molecular laser targets are used in experiments. Here, the signals by strongly-bound electrons are superimposed by the signals resulting from the interaction with weakly-bound outer electrons. To perform background-free experiments in the non-linear light-matter interaction regime, we developed and built a Penning trap to store highly-charged ions in a defined charge state and to prepare a well-defined ion target. We will present the ion-loading procedure of the Penning trap and the destructive and non-destructive detection of the ions. We will give an outlook to the upcoming beam time at FLASH in 2020 and the measurements planned.