European XFEL

The European XFEL in the Hamburg area is a new international research facility of superlatives: 27,000 X-ray flashes per second and a brilliance that is a billion times higher than that of the best conventional X-ray sources open up completely new opportunities for science. Research groups from around the world are able to map the atomic details of viruses, decipher the molecular composition of cells, take three-dimensional “photos” of the nanoworld, “film” chemical reactions, and study processes such as those occurring deep inside planets. European XFEL has a workforce of more than 350 employees and started user operation September 2017. With construction and commissioning costs of 1.25 billion euro (at 2005 price levels) and a total length of 3.4 kilometres, the European XFEL is one of the largest and most ambitious European new research facilities to date. At present, 12 countries have signed the European XFEL convention: Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Russia, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.
European XFEL role in PaNOSC
The European XFEL (XFEL.EU) has produced high volumes of data since the start of its operations in 2017. With these data volumes and the high repetition rate of 27000 pulses per second to be used in the future, concepts of data stewardship, data policies, online and offline data reduction and analysis, as well as a metadata catalog are essential for successful operation. In PaNOSC, European XFEL leads the work packages on data analysis (WP4) and on “Virtual Neutron and X-ray Laboratory” (WP5), making in particular use of its experience with the Jupyter ecosystem and in integrating simulations and modeling of experimental observables into the data lifecycle. European XFEL works closely with DESY, in particular in the topics of data management and data analysis. Development of experiment simulation capabilities and associated open metadata standards (openPMD) for simulation data is performed in close partnership with the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR).