PETRA III at DESY

PETRA III, at the DESY research campus in Hamburg, is one of the world’s brightest storage-ring sources of hard X-rays — a high-energy third-generation synchrotron built around a 2.3-kilometre ring originally constructed as a particle collider.

DESY rebuilt one octant of its former PETRA collider into PETRA III, a dedicated X-ray source that opened to users in 2009. Its very large circumference gives the electron beam an exceptionally small emittance, producing tightly collimated, very-short-wavelength X-rays. The beam energy of just over six gigaelectronvolts puts PETRA III among the highest-energy synchrotrons in operation, making it especially well suited to experiments on small samples or those needing penetrating, high-brilliance hard X-rays.

At a glanceFacility profile

Location

Hamburg, Germany

Operator

Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY)

Type

High-energy third-generation synchrotron, optimised for hard X-rays

Energy

6.08 GeV

Circumference

2.3 km

Beam current

100 mA, top-up operation

Beamlines

More than 20 in operation

First light

2009

Website

photon-science.desy.de

The scienceWhat researchers do here

The beamline portfolio spans high-resolution diffraction, inelastic and correlation spectroscopy, coherent imaging and X-ray microscopy and nano-analysis, across an energy range from roughly 150 eV to 200 keV. The brilliance and small beam size are a particular advantage for studying matter in real working conditions — watching catalysts at work, batteries as they charge, or solar-cell materials under operation — as well as for structural biology, crystallography, materials and the geosciences.

A former collider reborn: PETRA III turns one arc of a giant accelerator into a microscope for atoms.

The next generationTowards PETRA IV

DESY is preparing a major upgrade, PETRA IV, that would replace the storage ring with a modern multi-bend-achromat lattice to create a near-diffraction-limited source. The goal is to shrink the beam and raise its coherence by orders of magnitude, opening the way to three-dimensional X-ray imaging of complex materials and devices at the nanoscale and keeping the facility at the frontier of hard X-ray science.