Authors: P. Link, A. Schneidewind and M. Loewenhaupt

Abstract
After a year of operation we report about the excellent performance of the cold three-axis spectrometer PANDA located at the new German research reactor FRM II. Emphasis will be laid on the specific instrument design, which combines high neutron flux together with a very good resolution for both, energy and momentum transfer, low background and a large dynamic range.
The typical applications of cold neutron three-axes spectrometers (TAS) with polarisation analysis are magnetic and also lattice excitations. Ideally suited for single crystal studies three-axis spectrometers allow measurements at almost any point of the Q-w space.
Scientific applications comprise studies of spin dynamics and lattice dynamics as there are magnon and phonon dispersion relations, crystal-field excitations, anharmonic effects and magnon-phonon interaction. The high resolution in Q-w space allows experiments related to dynamics of phase transitions, critical scattering, soft-modes, central-peaks, spin-relaxation-effects and modulated phases.
We will present instrument parameters as well as data obtained during the commissioning time and about 15 user experiments. It will be shown that PANDA fulfills the expectations from the design studies. Further development of the instrument in the near future (polarization analysis; perfect bent Si monochromator) will also be addressed.