Computational Photon Science (CDL2)
Head of CDL 2: Dr. Anton Barty, Dr. Thomas White
State of the art X-ray sources in Hamburg including PETRA III, the European XFEL and the planned PETRA IV create opportunities for breakthroughs in the field of high-resolution structure determination. The new sources allow not only improvements in spatial resolution, but also the measurement of dynamic, i.e. temporally resolved structural changes. With these new radiation sources,
processes such as chemical, catalytic reactions, light-driven reactions (photosynthesis) or phase changes in the solid state (e.g. transition to high-temperature superconductivity) will in future be measured with temporal and spatial resolution at the electron level.
Essential to these experiments are new detectors with higher resolution, increased dynamic range and ever increasing readout rate. Such detectors deliver a flood of data at the limit of the possible acquisition rate and storage capacity, which not only poses challenges in overall data evaluation but also for data transport and management. the development of a robust process chain from data readout and storage to processing is urgently required in order to keep up with the drastically increasing data rates. Data challenges in these experiments include:
- Data ingest, transport and storage
- Appropriate data reduction by filtering the measurement data at detector level ("triggering”);
- Quasi real-time data evaluation to make optimum use of time-limited measurement times and to enable real-time control of the experiment in the future ("real-time feedback”);
As a provider of radiation sources and analysis methods for external users (universities, non-university research institutions, and industry), DESY and the European XFEL see it as their responsibility to make data available in evaluated form in the future, since users are faced with a bottleneck due to a lack of technical resources and know-how to efficiently evaluate raw data. This CDL focusses on data engineering and analysis challenges for high resolution structure determination including the development of new algorithms and imaging methodologies, and is strongly linked to topics of the Cluster of Excellence CUI: Advanced Imaging of Matter.
Involved Research Groups
Dr. Anton Barty, DESY, CFEL
Prof. Dr. Timo Gerkmann, Universität Hamburg, AG Signal Processing
Prof. Dr. Volker Gülzow, DESY, IT
Prof. Dr. Arwen Pearson, Universität Hamburg, Nanostructure and Solid State Physics
Prof. Dr. Matthias Rarey, Universität Hamburg, Zentrum für Bioinformatik
Prof. Dr. Nina Rohringer, DESY, Photon Science
Dr. Thomas White, DESY, CFEL
Associated Research Groups
Dr. Steve Aplin, European XFEL
Prof. Dr. Henry Chapman, Universität Hamburg und DESY, Photon Science
Prof. Dr. Christian Schroer, Universität Hamburg und DESY, Photon Science