This week marks the beginning of user beamtime at the DESIREE infrastructure. We spoke with Emma Anderson, the Stockholm University PhD student leading this week's experiments.

Who are you; where are you from?

I’m a PhD student with the Atomic Physics group at Stockholm University and my PhD is focussed on DESIREE experiments, so I haven’t had to travel far to work at DESIREE this week.

What is your research in general?

I have been working on measuring the spontaneous decay of hot metal clusters. This week we aim to determine the dominating decay mechanism in vibrationally energetic small metal clusters.

How will your experiments at DESIREE further your research?

The experiments this week allow us to investigate the decay of small cluster anions of silver and copper with channel specificity. We would like to be able to determine if fragmentation or electron detachment is the dominant neutralisation channel in each of these small systems.

Are there any unique capabilities of DESIREE that you are exploiting?

We are able to look at the spontaneous decay for very long times due to the very low residual gas pressure of DESIREE. We are utilising three of the detectors and one of the storage rings of DESIREE to allow us to do these measurements. Previous experiments that directly measure the competition between fragmentation and electron detachment are limited.

How do you find it to work at the infrastructure?

It is a good environment to work in. There is technical and research support. This means there is always someone to help you to get the best out of DESIREE.