SwissFEL Cristallina Experimental Station

Cristallina is the third experimental station of the SwissFEL ARAMIS hard X-ray beamline. It serves both quantum science (Cristallina-Q) and structural biology (Cristallina-MX), enabling the imaging of quantum many-body states under extreme conditions and serial femtosecond protein crystallography, respectively.

The Cristallina beamline is designed to operate at photon energies above 2.7 keV, and optimized to deliver highly focused, sub-femtosecond X-ray pulses. The X-ray capabilities will be uniquely complemented by offline experiment preparation areas in the experimental hutch. The day-one instrumentation will include a setup for fixed-target protein crystallography (Cristallina-MX instrument), as well as two setups installed on two diffractometers that provide high-field and low-temperature capabilities (Cristallina-Q instruments). The concept of operation foresees the shuffling of the instruments to and from the X-ray beam by the use of airpads sliding over a large granite floor.

The efforts are supported on one hand by the Macromolecular Crystallography (MX) group, and on the other by the Quantum Photon Science (QPS) group in strong collaboration with the Laboratory for Quantum Matter Research (LQMR) of Prof. Johan Chang at the University of Zurich (UZH). The latter consortium is partially funded by UZH, SNSF and PSI via the R’Equip scheme.

Cristallina is currently under realization. Commissioning of the beamline and of the scientific instruments, as well as, pilot user experiments is planned until 2024.