The HED science instrument at European XFEL: present status and perspectives for dynamic compression experimentsONLINE ONLY

Since 2017, the European X-ray Free Electron Laser in Schenefeld provides hard and soft X-ray FEL radiation. Until 2019, the six baseline instruments entered user operation, among them the HED science instrument. The HED science instrument is located at the SASE 2 undulator that provides extremely intense and coherent X-rays with photon energies between 5 - 25 keV, 2 -100 fs pulse lengths at a repetition rate of up to 4.5 MHz to the instrument. The instrument is dedicated to studying matter at high energy density states of matter. Three optical laser systems have been planned and in part already been realised at HED, that allow to drive matter into short-lived extreme states. Among them, a 10 Hz 100 J class high-energy optical laser will be available for dynamic compression experiments. Other drivers are X-ray or IR laser heated Diamond Anvil Cells (DAC) or dynamically compressed DACs. For the future, it is planned to provide magnetic fields with up to about 50 T for magnetic scattering experiments.

This talk will outline the present status of the instrument and show first user experiments. In the last part, a perspective will be given for dynamic compression experiments at HED using the 100 J class optical long pulse laser and diamond anvil cell applications at the instrument.