China will be joining the elite club of countries which provided researchers potent sources of high-energy photons known as free electron lasers (FELs). On January 13, a team of scientists and researchers recently announced that they had developed a new bright vacuum ultraviolet FEL light source known as Dalian Coherent Light Source (DCLS).

According to Phys, Dalian Coherent Light Source (DCLS can deliver the world's brightest FEL light in an energy range from eight to 24 eV. The Dalian Coherent Light Source has the following twists that make it unique.

First, it has only large laser light source in the world which is dedicated to the particular range of short-wavelength light known as vacuum ultraviolet. This ultraviolet makes it a new tool for the detection and analysis of molecules undergoing chemical reactions.

The said vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) light sources are useful especially for the sensitive detection of atoms, molecules, and clusters. The VUV can also be used to probe valence electronic structures of all kinds of materials.

According to Science Mag, the facility in Dalian which is located in the coastal city in Northeast China's Liaoning province can generate 140 trillion photons per laser pulse in one picosecond. Dalian Coherent Light Source facility was built by the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics and Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

"EUV light sources are especially useful for sensitive detection of atoms, molecules, and clusters," said Yang Xueming, a CAS academician and deputy director of the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics.

The brightness and pulse duration of the light source are keys to such detection. Dalian Coherent Light Source plays a significant role in exploring and discovering the unknown material world for the promotion of technological progress.

Reports claimed that there are more Chinese FEL facilities to be open soon. According to Wang Dong, an accelerator physicist at the Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics in China, the Institute's new "soft" x-ray FEL will produce its first light soon and is expected to open to users in 2 years.