Visit to XFEL and DESY Hamburg, Germany - Friday 28 June 2019


RSC Belgium is excited to announce that we have arranged for a visit to two of Europe’s most impressive scientific facilities for the chemical and other sciences: XFEL (EuropeanX-Ray Free-Electron Laser Facility) and DESY (DeutschesElektronen-Synchrotron). Many thanks to Prof. Bob Crichton for making these arrangements.

The visit
We have arranged to visit the new XFEL facility in the morning from 09h30 (to be confirmed) prompt. The tour and a possible presentation should take a maximum of 2.5 hours.

By June, the XFEL canteen should be up and running so we plan to take a quick lunch in XFEL or, failing that, at the canteen in DESY.

The transfer to DESY should take no more than an hour by public transport and we should be at DESY by 14h00 for our visit there that will last some three hours.

Please note that
  • Parking on the DESY premises is allowed - a parking permit may be obtained from the security booth at the gate.
  • Photographing for private purposes is permitted.
  • The visit is not recommended for persons with reduced mobility. There are lots of staircases and 1.5 kilometers of uneven terrain to cope with.
We have currently notified a nominal group size of 12 persons for the visits and the maximum group size is 20, so please indicate your participation as soon as possible to secure your place(s) on the trip by emailing RSC Belgium secretary, Tim Reynolds, on rscbelgium@gmail.com.

Travel & accommodation
RSC Belgium does not intend to make any bulk arrangements for travel or accommodation, individual participants will be responsible for their own arrangements.

However, return flights from Brussels to Hamburg (depart Thursday, return Saturday) are currently (3 April) available from ~EUR 133 return per person, and direct overnight buses run between Brussels and Hamburg for only ~EUR 20 per journey. The train is also possible, but the journey takes over 6 hours with normally two changes required and appears to cost more than the air fare. The driving distance to Hamburg from Brussels is ~600 km. 

A number of accommodation options are available close to XFEL/ DESY.

Hotel Mercure is just outside the DESY entrance so very conveniently located for our visit: https://www.accorhotels.com/gb/hotel-1659-mercure-hotel-hamburg-am-volkspark/index.shtml

The DESY guesthouse is on the DESY campus and designed to house visitors to the facility. It is very affordable, but also very basic: https://welcome-services.desy.de/e17/e202

Hotel Schmidt is in a nice location near some shops and restaurants, with good public transport links into Hamburg (it is next to a metro station). There is a direct bus to DESY which takes 7 minutes and departs every 10 minutes: http://www.hotel-schmidt.de/index.php?cat=Hotel

A location map for DESY and XFEL is below.

More information
The European X-Ray Free-Electron Laser Facility (European XFEL) is an X-ray research laser facility commissioned during 2017. This international project with twelve participating countries is located in the German federal states of Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein. A free-electron laser generates high-intensity electromagnetic radiation by accelerating electrons to close to the speed of light and directing them through special magnetic structures. The European XFEL produces X-ray light in synchronisation, resulting in high-intensity X-ray pulses with the ‘laser-like’ properties at intensities much brighter than those produced by conventional synchrotron light sources. The 3.4-kilometre long tunnel of the European XFEL housing the superconducting linear accelerator and photon beamlines runs 6 to 38 metres underground from the site of the DESY research centre in Hamburg to the town of Schenefeld in Schleswig-Holstein, where the experimental stations, laboratories and administrative buildings are located.


The Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (German Electron Synchrotron or DESY) is a national research centre in Germany that operates particle accelerators used to investigate the structure of matter. It conducts a broad spectrum of inter-disciplinary scientific research in three main areas: particle and high-energy physics (research to explore the fundamental characteristics of matter and forces, including astroparticle physics); photon science (research in surface physics, material science, chemistry, molecular biology, geophysics and medicine through the use of synchrotron radiation and free electron lasers); and the development, construction and operation of particle accelerators. Its name refers to its first project, an electron synchrotron.



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