On Monday 30 November 2015, EUCALL completed its first Technical Milestone:

Milestone M2 / M6.1 - Specification for sample holder and sample stages.

This achievement was made by the members of the High Repetition Rate Sample Delivery (HIREP) Work Package 6 and required the formulation of a written agreement about the specifications for sample holder and sample stages which will be implemented at the various beamlines at EUCALL's facilities.

EUCALL's high repetition rate laser facilities offer new possibilities to study high energy density processes with unprecedented statistics. This can enable research that would be impossible with lower repetition rates. Examples for this kind of experiment are detailed studies of warm dense matter produced by laser heating or serial femtosecond crystallography at nanocrystals of membrane proteins. Studying complex samples with high repetition rate not only relies on high repetition rate light sources, it depends on the possibility for quick and precise replacement of solid samples between subsequent shots. While every light source has systems for sample replacement, before EUCALL, no attempt has yet been undertaken to unify sample characterization and positioning of samples in order to give external user groups unhampered access to the facilities.

With the completion of HIREP's first milestone, the first steps towards an integrated concept for decentralized sample characterization and fast sample positioning at the participating facilities have successfully been made. It also shows that scientists from EUCALL's network, representing Free Electron Laser, Synchrotron Radiation and Optical Laser research infrastructures are already cooperating optimally, just two months into EUCALL's three year project period.