DESY, Hamburg
The free-electron laser facility FLASH at DESY, Germany is the world-wide unique SASE-FEL operating in the VUV and the soft X-ray wavelengths range. Since Summer 2005, FLASH operates as a user facility providing fully coherent 10 to 50 femtosecond long laser radiation in the wavelength range from 47 nm to 6.5 nm and with an unprecedented brilliance - many orders of magnitude higher than any other facility. The SASE radiation contains also higher harmonics. Several experiments have successfully used the third and fifth harmonics, in the latter case with a wavelength down to 1.59 nm. In addition, FLASH serves as a pilot facility for the European XFEL. Part of the beam time is reserved for general accelerator studies which also includes ILC related studies.
