We report recent results on the performance of FLASH (Free Electron Laser in Hamburg) operating at a wavelength of 13.7 nm where unprecedented peak and average powers for a coherent EUV radiation source have been measured. In the saturation regime the peak energy approached 170 µJ for individual pulses while the average energy per pulse reached 70 µJ. The pulse duration was in the region of 10 femtoseconds and peak

In the present approach the high reliability of ab initio techniques is combined with the easily amenable phenomenological core polarization concept for an efficient treatment of intershell correlation effects in all-electron SCF and valence CI calculations. By use of only a single adjustable atomic parameter, which is related to the radius of the core and determines the cutoff at short range, our effective core polarization potential (CPP) accounts quantitatively for dynamical intershell correlation as well as exclusion effects on the correlation energy of the core. The applications refer to alkali and alkaline earth atoms (Li to K and Be to Ca) and a detailed analysis is performed for core polarization effects on ionization energies, electron affinities, oscillator strengths, polarizabilities, van der Waals coefficients, the valence electron density, and spin densities. Very accurate results are obtained for well-known energetic properties and spin densities at the nucleus. With respect to the other applications we consider our results as the most reliable to date with an estimated uncertainty of 1%–2%.

Many scientific disciplines ranging from physics, chemistry and biology to material sciences, geophysics and medical diagnostics need a powerful X-ray source with pulse

We search for a spin-dependent P -and T -violating nucleon-nucleon interaction mediated by light pseudoscalar bosons such as axions or axion-like particles. We employed an ultra-sensitive low-field magnetometer based on the detection of free precession of co-located 3 He and 129 Xe nuclear spins using SQUIDs as low-noise magnetic flux detectors. The precession frequency shift in the presence of an unpolarized mass was measured to determine the coupling of pseudoscalar particles to the spin of the bound neutron. For boson masses between 2 µeV and 500 µeV (force ranges between 3·10 −4 m -10 −1 m) we improved the laboratory upper bounds by up to 4 orders of magnitude. origin into a photon in the presence of a static magnetic field. However, any axion or axion-like particle that couples with both scalar and pseudoscalar vertices to fundamental fermions would also mediate a parity and time-reversal symmetryviolating force between a fermion f and the spin of another fermion f σ , which is parameterized by a Yukawatype potential with range λ and a monopole-dipole coupling given by [8]:σ is the spin vector and λ is the range of the Yukawa-force with λ= /(m a c). Thus, the entire axion window can be probed by searching for spin-dependent short-range forces in the range between 20 µm and 0.2 m. g f s and g fσ p are dimensionless scalar and pseudoscalar coupling constants which in our case correspond to the scalar coupling of an axion-like particle to a nucleon (g . Accordingly, we have m fσ = m n .r is the unit distance vector from the bound neutron to the nucleon. The potential given by Eq. 1 effectively acts near the surface of a massive unpolarized sample as a pseudomagnetic field and gives rise to a shift ∆ν sp = 2 · V Σ /h, e.g., in the precession frequency of nuclear spin-polarized gases ( 3 He and 129 Xe), which according to the Schmidt model [9] can be regarded as an effective probe of spinpolarized bound neutrons. The potential V Σ is obtained by integration of V sp (r) from Eq. 1 over the volume of the massive unpolarized sample averaged over the volume of the polarized spin-sample, each having a cylindrical shape. Based on the analytical derivation of V Σ,∞ for disc-shaped spin-and matter samples with respective thicknesses D and d [10], we obtainη(λ) takes account for the finite size in transverse direction of our cylindrical samples and ∆x represents the finite gap between them. Furthermore, κ = 2 g N s g n p /(8π · m n ) and N is the nucleon number density of the unpolarized matter sample. η(λ) 1 is determined numerically for our cylindrically shaped spin-and matter samples at "close"-position (see Fig. 1). Our experimental approach to search for non-magnetic, spin-dependent interactions is to use an ultra-sensitive low-field comagnetometer based on detection of free spin precession of gaseous, nuclear polarized samples [11]. The Larmor frequencies of 3 He and 129 Xe in a guiding magnetic field B are given by ω L,He(Xe) = γ He(Xe) · B, with γ He(Xe) being the gyromagnetic ratios of the respective gas species...

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