Ultrafast Optics and X-Rays Division

Experimental mini accelerator achieves record energyª

Coupled terahertz device significantly improves electron beam quality
Laser trick produces high-energy terahertz pulsesª

Milestone for compact particle accelerators...find out more
Compact X-ray Sourcesª

Small THz accelerator structures for compact X-ray free electron lasers.
Optical Waveform Synthesisª

Inside a high energy optical parametric waveform synthesizer

Learn more about UFOX

What does UFOX stand for? It's Ultra Fast Optics and X-rays.
The Team's main area of research is the control of photons and electrons with ever increasing precision, currently in the attosecond range with the goal to advance ultrafast light and electron sources from the THz to the X-ray wavelength range. The sources can be of table-top size or large-scale X-FELs that enable new techniques to advance our understanding of the structure and function of matter. The team is led by Professor Franz Kärtner.

Currently the team are building a larger experiment named AXSIS at DESY which is funded by a Synergy Grant from the European Research Council (ERC).

We'd like to welcome you to our website so you can understand better how we are helping to push the boundary of knowledge.

Meet the team:

Find out more about our multidisciplinary research and research groups. We are continuously looking for Bachelor, Master, and PhD-students as well as Postdoctoral Associates. Read more.

News and Announcements

Synthesis of optical waveforms promises a "brighter" future for attosecond science

07 August 2020

These achievements in ultrafast laser technology are paving the way to customisable light flashes in the whole optical range and will enable novel experiments in the attosecond regime. Read more about the findings published in the journal Nature Photonics.