The Laser
The x-ray light will be generated by Self-Amplified Spontaneous Emission (SASE), where electrons interact with the radiation that they or their neighbours emit. The result is spontaneous emission of tightly bunched packages of radiation that are amplified like laser light. The peak brilliance of the European XFEL will be billions of times higher than that of conventional x-ray light sources, the average brilliance being 10,000 times higher. The proposed facility will also produce many more (up to 30,000) pulses per second than similar projects in the US and Japan, which is achieved by adopting the superconducting linear accelerator technology developed at DESY.
Read more about this topic: European X-ray Free Electron Laser