FLASH 2020+

FLASH is the world’s first short wavelengthfree-electron laser (FEL) facility and starteduser operation already in 2005. It still re-mains the only high repetition rate free-electronlaser in the XUV/soft X-ray regime worldwide. Based on the superconducting accelerator tech-nology developed at DESY, it can providepresently up to 5000 photon pulses per sec-ond. Those are delivered to users in pulsetrains of up to500pulses with a separationof1μsrepeated10 times/s(burst mode oper-ation). Experiments at FLASH span diversefields. Examples are atomic, molecular andoptical (AMO) physics, chemistry, condensedmatter and nanoscience, life sciences, warmdense matter research and FEL physics andtechnology. Science at FLASH also drives thedevelopment of new methods and instrumenta-tion.