Abstract
The European X-ray Free-Electron Laser (FEL) became the first operational high-repetition-rate hard X-ray FEL with first lasing in May 2017. Biological structure determination has already benefitted from the unique properties and capabilities of X-ray FELs, predominantly through the development and application of serial crystallography. The possibility of now performing such experiments at data rates more than an order of magnitude greater than previous X-ray FELs enables not only a higher rate of discovery but also new classes of experiments previously not feasible at lower data rates. One example is time-resolved experiments requiring a higher number of time steps for interpretation, or structure determination from samples with low hit rates in conventional X-ray FEL serial crystallography. Following first lasing at the European XFEL, initial commissioning and operation occurred at two scientific instruments, one of which is the Single Particles, Clusters and Biomolecules and Serial Femtosecond Crystallography (SPB/SFX) instrument. This instrument provides a photon energy range, focal spot sizes and diagnostic tools necessary for structure determination of biological specimens. The instrumentation explicitly addresses serial crystallography and the developing single particle imaging method as well as other forward-scattering and diffraction techniques. This paper describes the major science cases of SPB/SFX and its initial instrumentation - in particular its optical systems, available sample delivery methods, 2D detectors, supporting optical laser systems and key diagnostic components. The present capabilities of the instrument will be reviewed and a brief outlook of its future capabilities is also described.
Highlights
The recently operational European X-ray Free-Electron Laser (EuXFEL) is the first high-repetition-rate hard X-ray FEL in the world (Abela et al, 2006)
Following first lasing at the European XFEL, initial commissioning and operation occurred at two scientific instruments, one of which is the Single Particles, Clusters and Biomolecules and Serial Femtosecond Crystallography (SPB/SFX) instrument
This paper describes the major science cases of SPB/SFX and its initial instrumentation – in particular its optical systems, available sample delivery methods, 2D detectors, supporting optical laser systems and key diagnostic components
Summary
The recently operational European X-ray Free-Electron Laser (EuXFEL) is the first high-repetition-rate hard X-ray FEL in the world (Abela et al, 2006). The instrument relies on a variety of complex systems, many of which are described in more detail in this journal These systems include the accelerator (Decking et al, 2019), the photon transport systems (Sinn et al, 2019) from EuXFEL’s undulator source (Abeghyan et al, 2019) to the instrument and the detector systems (Henrich et al, 2011); in addition, the optical laser systems (Palmer et al, 2019) that provide optical pulses at the same repetition rate as the EuXFEL for so-called pump–probe experiments that excite (‘pump’) a system with an optical pulse and investigate (‘probe’) it with the X-ray FEL pulses (or vice versa). Some outlook is given towards the additional instrumentation to be installed in 2019, in particular brief descriptions of the additional interaction regions contributed by the SFX user consortium (SFX User Consortium, 2013), which will both broaden the instrument capability and increase its capacity in the near future
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