Patrick Goes to Hamburg

Earlier in March, I spent a week or two in Hamburg at the European X-Ray Free Electron Laser where I got a chance to lead my first beamtime at the Small Quantum Systems (SQS) beamline, the first piece of truly independent research since I started at Nottingham. This is work that my collaborator Matt Robinson and I have been discussing and planning for the better part of two years, and brought together a team of researchers from across the UK and Europe. The experience was fantastic; simultaneously exciting, stressful, inspiring, and exhausting. I rapidly found out how little I really knew about X-ray experiments, but learned a tonne in a hurry and felt able to make good decisions on-the-fly, once things got serious.

I won’t say much about the results other than the experiment went better than I could possibly imagine, and I can’t wait to share the results. I want to give an extra special thanks to everyone from the SQS team who made me feel welcome, and from our wider collaboration for helping pull off the best experiment that I’ve been a part of, and I suspect might be one of the best of it’s kind anywhere, period.

Stay Tuned.