Scientific Highlights
BEATS Project
Mirjam van Daalen, chair of the BEATS Steering Committee
COVID-19 - travel assistance websites launched
The Bio Nano spinout of Prof. Aeppli has launched new travel assistance websites that provide continually updated information on restrictions such as multi-day quarantines imposed on travel between countries, together with the latest pandemic predictions so that travellers can make informed decisions.
Harnessing components from the optical internet for programmable spectroscopy
A novel concept for extracting information from spectra where traditional post-processing procedures fail, dubbed ‘software-defined spectroscopy’, offers a fresh approach to high-resolution terahertz spectroscopy. The new method implements an ‘optical comb’ and combines it with a programmable modulator, all using components from the optical internet.
Two-color snapshots of ultrafast charge and spin dynamics
In a joint research effort, an international team of scientists lead by Emmanuelle Jal (Sorbonne Université) performed a time-resolved experiment at the FERMI free-electron laser to disclose the dynamic behavior of two magnetic element of a compount material in only one snapshot. The X-ray Optics and Applications group developed a dedicated optical element for this experiment that is usable with two different photon energies (colors) simultaneously.
PSI - member of the Microsoft Quantum Network
The PSD is a research partner in the Microsoft Quantum Network, which is a broad community of individuals and organizations collaborating with Microsoft to advance a comprehensive quantum ecosystem, develop practical solutions, and build a robust quantum workforce.
The institutions of scientific excellence are partnering collaboratively with Microsoft to pursue the advancement of quantum computing research, development, and education. The large scale facilities at PSI, in particular the Swiss Light Source, offers unique characterizations techniques to shed light on the secrets of functional materials.
First light in the SwissFEL Maloja endstation
The first endstation at the SwissFEL Athos soft X-ray branch is rapidly developing and on track for first experiments in 2021.
Analytical Research Infrastructures of Europe (ARIE) join forces to face COVID-19 and other viral and microbial threats
After the joint position paper published as a pre-release in July, in which the Analytical Research Infrastructures of Europe (ARIE) presented their plan to tackle HE Missions, the ARIE enhanced its cross-border, multidisciplinary collaboration to offer Europe a strong and valid weapon against the present COVID-19 challenge and other potential viral and microbial threats.
Advances in long-wavelength native phasing at X-ray free-electron lasers
Long-wavelength pulses from the Swiss X-ray free-electron laser (XFEL) have been used for de novo protein structure determination by native single-wavelength anomalous diffraction (native-SAD) phasing of serial femtosecond crystallography (SFX) data.
Narrow-band and tunable intense terahertz pulses for mode-selective coherent phonon excitation
We generate frequency-tunable narrow-band intense fields in the terahertz (THz) range by optical rectification of a temporally modulated near-infrared laser pumping a nonlinear organic crystal.