Martin Beye
About me
My group focusses on applying modern (soft) X-ray spectroscopy methods to surface chemical reactions, as well as phase transitions. To this end, we are heavily involved also in method and instrument development and operation at different large-scale facilities.
My formal education was completed at Hamburg University in Germany, before I moved on to the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin, where the synchrotron BESSY is operated and to Stanford, USA, to the free-electron laser LCLS. Later, I became group leader at DESY in Hamburg, where the free-electron laser FLASH and the synchrotron PETRA are operated. There, I also served as interim scientific head of FLASH, before I moved to Stockholm University.
Research
The different research foci are as follows:
- Establishing elementary steps in surface chemical reactions at the most fundamental level from an experimental viewpoint. To this end, we apply modern surface sensitive X-ray spectroscopy and other tools to follow chemical reactions in real time. We mostly focus on simple and pure catalyst materials in order to understand processes on a basic level, before more complex materials are studied.
- Instrument and method development to make best use of novel coherent and intense X-ray sources. To this end, we operate instruments at the large-scale facilities MAX IV in Lund (Sweden), at FLASH and PETRA in Hamburg (Germany) and at LCLS in Stanford (USA). Here, we focus on photoemission spectroscopy at pressures up to 1 bar, on resonant elastic and inelastic scattering, x-ray photon correlation spectroscopy as well as other developments. The novel coherence properties of synchrotron light sources as well as the coherence and intensity of free-electron lasers promise to enable breakthroughs in our ability to probe matter, like the laser has done many decades ago. Our group is here at the forefront of some of these developments.