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Edited by M. Yabashi, RIKEN SPring-8 Center, Japan 1 This article will form part of a virtual special issue on X-ray free-electron lasers.The European XFEL comprises three undulator systems. All of the systems use standardized mechanical, magnetic and control components. The key elements such as undulators, phase shifters and quadrupole movers as well as their controls are described, with special emphasis on the SASE1 undulator system, which was the first to become operational and has been lasing since May 2017. The role of these systems for the commissioning is outlined with special emphasis on beam-based alignment, which was important to achieve first lasing. Radiation damage was observed. The exposure doses were measured with the online radiation dosimetry system. Countermeasures and latest results are reported, which are important for a high-duty-cycle machine such as the European XFEL.

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In the version of this Article originally published, the surname of the author N. Johansson was misspelled as 'Johannson'. In addition, in affiliation 17, "University of Łódź" was incorrect; it should have read "Łódź University of Technology". These errors have been corrected in the online versions of the Article and its Supplementary Information.

Superconducting Undulators (SCUs) can produce higher photon flux and cover a wider photon energy range compared to permanent magnet undulators (PMUs) with the same vacuum gap and period length. To build the know-how to implement superconducting undulators for future upgrades of the European XFEL facility, the test stand SUNDAE1 for the characterization of SCU is being developed. The purpose of SUNDAE1 is the training, tuning and development of new SCU coils by means of precise magnetic field measurements. The experimental setup will allow the characterization of magnets up to 2m in length. These magnets will be immersed in a Helium bath at 4K or 2K temperature. In this article, we describe the experimental setup and highlight its expected performances.

The European XFEL is currently the only high-repetition rate hard X-ray free electron laser (FEL) facility in operation worldwide. We significantly improved its capabilities by installing a cascaded Hard X-ray Self-Seeding (HXRSS) system, composed of two single-crystal monochromators. With this system, mJ-level pulses in the photon energy range of 6 -14keV with a bandwidth around 1eV (corresponding to about 1mJ/eV spectral density) were generated. Combined with the burst-mode, multi-MHz repetition rate of the European XFEL accelerator, the cascaded HXRSS setup provides two orders of magnitude higher average spectral brightness than any other FEL facility. At 2.25 MHz repetition rate and photon energies in the 6-7 keV range, we observed for the first time heat-load effects on the HXRSS crystals, substantially altering the spectra of subsequent X-ray pulses. Using the cascaded self-seeding scheme, we successfully reduced this effect to below detection level. These results open up exciting possibilities in a wide range of scientific fields, exploiting the extreme brightness and the narrow bandwidth of HXRSS pulses.

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