The Photo lnjector Test Facility PITZ in Zeuthen (near Berlin) is one of the leading international groups in developments on modern photo injectors and their applications. Current R&D goals of PITZ include improving electron source brightness beyond state of the art for X-ray Free Electron Lasers as well as applications of high brightness beams e.g. for FLASH radiation therapy R&D (FLASHlab@PITZ).

FLASH radiation therapy (FLASH RT) involves treatments delivered at ultra-high dose rates, and is a new and exciting opportunity for cancer treatment. The PITZ accelerator is the perfect test facility for this new technique as it is extremely flexible in the timing of the irradiation bunches and the corresponding dose rates and can deliver full treatment doses within a 1 ms bunch train. The detectors and methods established for dosimetry of conventional radiotherapy are not suitable for FLASH RT. The student will develop suitable detection and dosimetry methods at ultra-high dose rates, making use of the detector expertise developed for particle, astroparticle and accelerator physics applications at DESY Zeuthen in cooperation with national and international partners.