Facilities & projects

DESY is one of the world’s leading accelerator centres.

The accelerators and detectors that DESY develops and builds are unique research tools. The facilities generate the world’s most intense X-ray light, accelerate particles to record energies and open new windows onto the universe. In addition, DESY scientists are involved in major international projects in particle and astroparticle physics.

Location map of DESY's research facilities & projects.
Location map of DESY's research facilities & projects. Graphic: DESY

Accelerator research & development

DESY's groundbreaking high-power laser KALDERA will make plasma accelerators competitive.

LUX is used to investigate and further develop laser-driven plasma acceleration.

  • More about LUX

The electron bunches of FLASH are used to explore particle-driven plasma acceleration.

SINBAD and ATHENA offer unique infrastructures for the development of novel accelerators.

ARES enables accelerator research and the development of autonomous accelerator procedures.

The photoinjector test facility at DESY in Zeuthen is used to develop and optimise high-performance electron sources.

The source of relativistic electron beams enables novel, time-resolved structural investigations.

Accelerators for photon science

DESY operates one of the brightest storage ring X-ray radiation sources in the world.

DESY is developing the world’s best storage ring X-ray light source.

The free-electron laser generates ultrashort-pulse laser light in the soft X-ray range.

The upgrade project makes the FLASH free-electron laser even more flexible and powerful.

DESY is the main shareholder and operates the accelerator of Europe’s big X-ray laser.

Particle physics research facilities

The Large Hadron Collider at the CERN research centre near Geneva is the world’s most powerful accelerator.

The experiment at the SuperKEKB accelerator in Japan is used for research with particles called B mesons.

ALPS II is the first experiment worldwide that could produce and detect dark matter particles in the laboratory.

The prototype for the International Axion Observatory (IAXO) will search for extremely light particles from the sun.

The experiment is intended to explore the dark matter in our galaxy.

The experiment is designed to test the theory of quantum electrodynamics.

Astroparticle physics research facilities

The High Energy Stereoscopic System in Namibia explores cosmic gamma rays.

The Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory will investigate high-energy gamma rays from space.

  • DESY’s contribution to CTAO
  • More about CTAO

The telescope at the South Pole is looking for cosmic neutrinos.

IceCube Gen-2 will expand the research capabilities of the IceCube neutrino telescope at the South Pole.

The Radio Neutrino Observatory Greenland is intended to detect high-energy neutrinos with radio antennas.

  • DESY’s contribution to RNO-G
  • More about RNO-G

The Ultraviolet Transient Astronomy Satellite will observe space in ultraviolet light.

DESY’s other facilities

The Interdisciplinary Data and Analysis Facility offers extensive computing capacities for research at DESY: the Maxwell High-Performance Computing (HPC) Cluster, in particular for photon science and accelerator development, the DESY Grid infrastructure with a Tier-2 centre for particle and astroparticle physics as well as the National Analysis Facility (NAF) for particle physics.

Research groups from all over the world use the DESY test beam to check detector components.

Complex components for the LHC detectors ATLAS and CMS are being built and tested in the Detector Assembly Facility.

Cooperations & institutes

Top-level research is scarcely possible today without networking and cooperation between different institutes, countries and scientific disciplines. DESY too operates within strong networks.

Visualisation of the PETRA IV particle accelerator.

PETRA IV: A discovery machine for uncharted scientific territory


Thanks to PETRA IV's ultrabright X-ray light, researchers will be able to investigate natural phenomena and technical processes in new dimensions.

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