This handbook presents the development of synchrotron light sources and free-electron lasers as well as new scientific applications. Hardly any other discovery of the nineteenth century had such an impact on science and technology as Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen's seminal discovery of X-rays in the year 1895. X-ray tubes soon became established as excellent instruments for numerous applications in medicine, biology, materials science and testing, chemistry and even public security. Developing new radiation sources with higher and higher brilliance and much extended spectral range for an ever widening field of research resulted in stunning developments like the electron storage ring and the free-electron laser. This second edition includes both updated chapters and new contributions highlighting the most recent developments in the field. Reports on operation experience of the new FEL facilities are complemented by discussions of new developments in X-ray beamline optics and detectors. Contributions on applications now include high pressure work, catalytic processes and engineering materials, medical applications and studies of cultural heritage. New contributions on IR spectroscopy, resonant inelastic X-ray scattering (RIXS) and studies of liquids complete this second edition.

Eberhard J. Jaeschke studied Physics at the universities of Erlangen and Princeton. After his Ph.D. in Nuclear Physics, he moved to the Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik, Heidelberg, where his interests turned more and more to the physics of accelerators and their development. At Heidelberg University, he taught experimental physics, got his habilitation, and was promoted to professor (apl). The Heidelberg-TSR - the first heavy ion cooler ring with electron and laser cooling, which he managed as project leader - was a worldwide recognized success. From Heidelberg, Eberhard Jaeschke moved to Berlin, becoming member of the board of directors of the Berliner-Elektronenspeicherring-Gesellschaft für Synchrotronstrahlung (BESSY), and received a call for a full professorship at the Humboldt Universität. He was project director of the construction of BESSY II, the first German third-generation synchrotron light source. His marvelous team managed to build BESSY II in time and on budget and turned after this success to the design of modern light sources, the free-electron lasers (FELs). Research stays over the years were at Los Alamos, Stony Brook, Tokyo, Chalk River, and Novosibirsk, at the Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics. Eberhard Jaeschke retired from BESSY after 18 years on the board and is now professor emeritus. In 2010, he was awarded the Officer's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. Shaukat Khan Shaukat Khan studied Physics at Heidelberg University and received his doctor's degree in 1987 for work in nuclear spectroscopy at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics. While working as a postdoc on a silicon vertex detector for the ARGUS experiment at DESY/Hamburg, he became more and more interested in accelerator physics. Consequently, he joined the BESSY II project in Berlin in 1993 where his research interests included collective beam instabilities and the generation of ultrashort X-ray pulses. After receiving his lecturer qualification (h