The HED instrument at the European XFEL: Unique capabilities to study material properties of laser-compressed matter

The HED instrument at the European XFEL offers unique capabilities to study extreme states of matter, delivering X-ray bursts with up to 2 mJ of pulse energy, fs pulse duration and photon energies up to 25 keV. This allows in-situ studies of highly transient states using various x-ray diagnostics such as diffraction, scattering and imaging.

The two recently installed laser drivers are a 400 TW/25 fs short pulse laser RELAX and a 100J/ns laser DIPOLE-100X, both capable running at 10 Hz enabling high repetition rate experiments for experiments requiring signal integration due to low scattering cross sections.

The combination of these laser drivers with the intense x-ray source allows studying matter at extreme pressures, transformation at high deformation rates, high field physics and warm dense matter. We will present the status of the instrument, in particular the performance of the recently commissioned DIPOLE 100-X laser, access mode and future developments .