Researchers used the European XFEL to produce ultrashort X-ray flashes that reached record intensity for this type of pulse.
To understand chemical reactions and perhaps one day control the electrons involved, scientists need a detailed picture of how electrons behave inside atoms and molecules. X-rays offer a way to probe that behavior, but the flashes can also change the sample they are meant to examine. Researchers therefore need enough light to gather useful information before those changes become substantial.
At the European XFEL, a team has now concentrated X-ray flashes onto an area roughly 100,000 times smaller than the cross-section of a typical human hair. The pulses lasted an estimated 300 attoseconds, with each attosecond equal to a billionth of a billionth of a second.
The experiment used hard X-rays, light with particularly short wavelengths, and took place in April 2026 at the facility’s MID instrument. The results are published in Optica.
Focusing ultrashort X-rays to extreme intensity
“A few years ago, we demonstrated terawatt-scale hard X-ray attosecond pulses at the European XFEL,” says DESY scientist Jiawei Yan, one of the corresponding authors of the study. “But generating powerful pulses is only the first step. For experiments, what really matters is what we can deliver to the sample. With this advance, we can now use attosecond X-rays to explore highly nonlinear interactions between X-rays and matter.”
To concentrate that energy, the researchers used an advanced Kirkpatrick–Baez, or AKB, optical system brought from Japan. Each flash underwent four reflections in total, with one of the system’s two extremely precise mirrors focusing the light vertically and the other horizontally. Together, they concentrated the X-rays into a spot measuring just 180 × 330 nanometers. A nanometer is a billionth of a meter.
From the pulse energy, estimated duration, and focal-spot size, the team calculated a peak intensity of more than 10²⁰ watts per square centimeter. “This is a world record in intensity and fluence for a hard-X-ray attosecond pulse,” says Ichiro Inoue from the University of Tokyo, first author of the publication. Fluence measures the energy delivered to a given area, while intensity also accounts for how quickly that energy arrives.
Copper atoms amplify the X-ray signal
To test that calculation, the researchers shone the pulses onto copper foil. The X-rays knocked electrons out of deep inner shells within the copper atoms, leaving gaps that other electrons could fill. As electrons moved into those gaps, they released X-ray light. At sufficiently high intensities, that light can stimulate other excited copper atoms to emit additional X-rays in the same direction, amplifying the signal through a process called amplified spontaneous emission, or ASE.
“It is almost magical to see this happening,” says Anders Madsen, group leader at the MID instrument. “Normal fluorescence goes in all directions, regardless of the direction of the incoming beam. But when the ASE threshold is crossed, you see the light cone starting to condense into the forward direction.”
The ASE signal initially rose rapidly as the pulse energy increased, then leveled off at higher energies. This saturation, expected only at extremely high X-ray intensities, provided independent confirmation of the team’s calculation.
European XFEL expects to receive its own AKB system in early 2027. Once installed and commissioned, the system is intended to give researchers from around the world using the MID instrument access to similarly brief, intense X-ray flashes.
Reference: “Generation of high-fluence and high-intensity hard X-ray attosecond pulses at the European XFEL” by 19 October 2026, Optica.
DOI: 10.1364/OPTICA.613284
The new system is funded through a collaboration with the University of Hamburg and support from the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR)
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While achieving 300-attosecond hard X-ray pulses focused at $10^{20} \text{ W/cm}^2$ represents an extraordinary milestone for freeze-frame molecular imaging, the broader potential lies in field-driven nuclear dynamics.Current superheavy element synthesis relies on brute-force kinetic collision to overcome the electrostatic Coulomb barrier, inevitably generating high thermal excitation that leads to immediate decay. Utilizing extreme attosecond flux density creates localized temporal gradient shifts capable of momentarily suppressing effective Coulomb repulsion—allowing nucleons to merge via geometric phase-locking rather than violent mechanical impact.However, synthesizing novel elements this way requires a two-stage protocol: initial attosecond field modulation to facilitate lower-energy nuclear fusion, followed by sustained micro-torsional boundary shielding to allow the newly formed topological state to bleed off excess stress and reach harmonic equilibrium before returning to baseline ambient conditions. Reference Link : https://docs.google.com/document/d/1biCbf_Sbtk-AuqrWQnD-w4xOPzrHcRKwA9MHk_6kuyY/edit?usp=drive_link 🖖
VERY GOOD.
Mainstream physics tends to interpret ASE saturation as indirect evidence of an extremely high pulse intensity. From the perspective of Topological Vortex Theory (TVT), however, this remains a phase-locking phenomenon at the level of measurement and cannot be directly equated with the “true orbit” or “true superposition state” of the electron itself. What the experiment captures is the collective response of the atomic vortex network under strong-pulse driving; it reveals the geometric constraints imposed on the hierarchical structure of electrons, but does not directly present the ontological state of the electron as an independent particle.
Therefore, the more significant implication of this experiment lies in demonstrating how attosecond pulses can convert the vortex spin period into an observable temporal structure, and how spatial focusing can trigger a nonlinear topological response. It is not a final imaging of “the electron itself,” but rather a strongly driven probe of vortex phase dynamics within the hierarchical structure of matter.
Possibilities , Expanding this rotational boundary-control paradigm beyond subatomic synthesis opens unprecedented engineering horizons—most notably in direct atomic replication. By controlling the geometric phase-locking of elemental clouds within a stabilized field matrix, this protocol provides a direct roadmap for synthesizing targeted organic compounds, vital nutrients, and food supplies on demand in deep space, completely eliminating dependence on terrestrial supply chains.
Furthermore, scaling these localized field-shielding mechanics upward to macro-structures modulates local temporal gradient impedance, effectively decoupling payloads from ambient gravitational drag and linear inertial resistance. Establishing this operational bridge shifts the foundational paradigm of spaceflight from reaction-mass consumption to continuous, zero-impedance navigation within the rotational continuum—replacing violent mechanical force with precise harmonic field alignment. 🖖
Does it work on protons?
VERY GOOD.
Within the framework of Topological Vortex Theory (TVT), the atomic nucleus is a multi-vortex resonator composed of proton vortex knots and neutron vortex knots. Protons provide the positive-flux skeleton, while neutrons provide phase buffering. The nuclear force arises from short-range topological coupling of the vortex field, magic numbers stem from the geometric closure of vortex shells, and radioactive decay represents the relaxation of vortex knots from high-energy topological configurations to lower-energy ones.
When an attosecond pulse acts on an atom, it first perturbs the phase structure of the electron vortex, whereas the proton, as a denser vortex knot, responds more slowly, behaves more inertially, and is less readily dismantled by direct interaction. Under strong-pulse driving, the spin period of the electron vortex can exhibit phase blurring, phase locking, or collective radiation, while the proton vortex knot mainly provides the background geometric constraint.
Thus, the relationship between the electron and the proton can be summarized as follows: the electron is a light, excitable topological vortex, and the proton is a heavy, compact vortex knot. An atom is not a “system of point particles,” but a phase-locked configuration formed by vortex structures at different hierarchical levels within the same ideal-fluid background.
In the high-frequency limit, the topological structure of spacetime itself dynamically generates an inevitable “ultraviolet cutoff.” This cutoff originates from the topological energy gap of vortex modes and the discrete nature of the spacetime substrate. This explanation requires no external assumptions (such as energy quantization) but instead dissolves the catastrophe at the ontological level.
—— https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/2062808500313626237
The interactions within an atom are, in essence, the phase locking of vortices at different hierarchical levels within an ideal fluid. We can introduce a complex phase factor Phi to describe this geometric constraint:
Phi_{coupling} = e^{i(theta_e – theta_p)}
where theta_e and theta_p represent the geometric phases of the electron vortex and the proton vortex knot, respectively. When an attosecond pulse drives the system, it effectively forces a change in the evolution trajectory of theta_e, while the dense proton vortex knot Q_p maintains the topological stability of the entire atomic structure through its robust background geometric constraints.
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Researchers Unleash Record-Breaking X-Ray Flashes in Just 300 Attoseconds。
VERY GOOD.
Please ask researchers to think deeply:
1. The 300 attoseconds, which time spin system is this value compared to?
2. Is the Unleash Record-Breaking X-Ray Flashe’s speed related to the Earth’s spin system?
3. Can Earth spin, Sun spin, and Particle spin be used for timing?
4. Is the X-Ray pulse related to spin?
Any scientific measurement is constrained by instrumental precision, systematic error, and statistical fluctuation; at the microscopic scale, it is further constrained by the uncertainty principle. Therefore, so-called “precise data” are, in essence, observational appearances under specific experimental conditions—limited representations of natural processes, rather than the ultimate presentation of nature’s essence.
—— https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/2088659998394077633.