Exploiting the high repetition rate of the European XFEL for structure determination: The SPB/SFX instrument from first light, to first users, and beyond

Speaker: Adrian Mancuso, European XFEL

Program Description
The European XFEL (EuXFEL) is the world’s first high repetition rate, hard X-ray free-electron laser[1]. First lasing was achieved in May of last year (2017) and first user experiments were performedat two different end-stations [2] in the September following. In this seminar I will present a selectionof the highlights and challenges from first light through to first users using the Single Particles,clusters and Biomolecules and Serial Femtosecond Crystallography (SPB/SFX) instrument [3] asan example.

I will outline the experimental capabilities of the SPB/SFX instrument [3], an instrument designed topredominantly support structural biology applications. I will show a selection of results from the firstexperiments at the EuXFEL which demonstrate that we can successfully exploit the megahertzrepetition rate of EuXFEL for both serial crystallography [4, 5] and for single particle imaging (SPI).Examples of novel structures [4] as well as time-resolved mixing [6] and pump-probe [7]experiments will be shown, including examples that explicitly exploit the megahertz capabilities ofEuXFEL.

Finally, I will provide a glance toward the future by considering the opportunities for single particleimaging at high repetition rate XFELs. I’ll present a personal summary of the state of single particleimaging with XFELs—largely informed by work at LCLS [8—10]. From that status I’ll describe thenext steps of method development possible at the SPB/SFX instrument, which ideally allow for thenext phase in development of SPI at XFELs.

[1] M. Altarelli, et al, (eds.), XFEL: The European X-ray Free-ElectronLaser—Technical Design Report, DESY 2006-097, Hamburg, Germany (2006).[2] T. Tschentscher, et al Applied Sciences, 7(6), 592–35 (2017).[3] A. P. Mancuso, et al, Technical design report: Scientific instrument Single Particles, Clusters,and Biomolecules (SPB). (European XFEL, 2013).[4] M. Wiedorn, et al, Nature Communications, 9, 4025 (2018).[5] M. Grünbein, et al, Nature Communications, 9, 3487 (2018).[6] Unpublished, In preparation[7] Unpublished, In preparation[8] A. Aquila, et al, Structural Dynamics, 2(4), 041701–14 (2015).[9] H.K. Reddy, et al, Scientific Data, 4, 170079 (2017)[10] R. Kurta, et al, Phys. Rev. Lett., 119, 158102 (2017)