Special issue on frontiers of free electron laser science

Abstract

Your invitation to submit. Journal of Physics. B: Atomic Molecular and Optical Physics (JPhysB) is delighted to announce a forthcoming special issue on 'Frontiers of free electron laser science', to appear in 2013, and invites you to submit a paper.This special issue will highlight recent advances in x-ray free electron laser (FEL) research enabled by the new generation of FELs in Europe, Japan and the USA. This is a particularly good moment to launch a special issue on this topic in JPhysB, to consolidate and place into a broader context some the recent novel research in the earliest years of x-ray FELs. We invite you to contribute original papers that describe some of these exciting results in several areas: AMO physics at x-ray FELs covering now a broad energy range from a few 10 eV to several tens keV is a central area of interest for this topical issue. We also especially welcome research papers on the topic of x-ray lasers that are pumped by FELs, as well as the physics of the x-ray FEL itself. Recent rapid developments in beam conditioning should also be covered, including seeding, echo and selective emittance spoiling. Such improved instrumentation has made possible the first femtosecond x-ray matter studies at FELs, and we invite papers in these areas as well.Pump-probe spectroscopy has now been extended to x-ray FELs, both with multiple x-ray pulses and with synchronized optical and x-ray pulses. The science related to timing x-ray pulses to laser-induced phenomena, including streaking, cross correlations and other time tools will be emphasized in this issue. Ultrafast x-ray FELs are also among the most intense laser sources available, and exceed the focusable intensity of other x-ray sources by many orders of magnitude. Therefore, intense x-ray atom and molecule interactions will be highlighted in this issue, as will the science of x-ray-induced damage. High intensities also give rise to the new field of nonlinear x-ray physics, and we would like papers in this area as well. Some of the most interesting work in this regard is x-ray cluster interactions, and this is also a topic of interest.Finally, we would like this special issue to summarize the most recent advances in techniques and instrumentation for x-ray FEL research. Particle correlation and multiple particle detection are of great interest, as is the physics of 'diffract before destroy', which has made the new field of coherent single particle diffraction possible.Three review articles will accompany the contributed papers in this special issue, summarizing the first years of research at the three pioneering 4th generation user facilities¸ FLASH, LCLS and SACLA/SCSS. The points of contact for these articles are Michel Meyer for FLASH, Christoph Bostedt for LCLS, and Makina Yabashi for SACLA/SCSS. We hope that this collection will be a resource for the rapidly expanding scientific community interested in this new research field.You are invited to submit your article by 1 February 2013.