Latest Synchrotron light source Stories
Studies by Berkeley Lab scientists of electron beam quality in laser plasma accelerators include novel tests for slice-energy spread Part Two: Slicing through the electron beam Wim Leemans of Berkeley Lab’s Accelerator and Fusion Research Division heads LOASIS, the Laser and Optical Accelerator Systems Integrated Studies, an oasis indeed for students pursuing graduate studies in laser plasma acceleration (LPA). Among the most promising applications of future table-top accelerators...
Berkeley Lab’s lead in laser plasma acceleration research continues with new benchmarks for electron beam quality Part One: Focusing in on beam focus The rapidly evolving technology of laser plasma accelerators (LPAs) – called “table-top accelerators” because their length can be measured in centimeters instead of kilometers – promises a new breed of machines, far less expensive and with far less impact on the land and the environment than today’s conventional accelerators....
Berkeley Lab scientists and their colleagues have successfully probed the effects of light at the atomic scale by mixing x-ray and optical light waves at the Linac Coherent Light Source Light changes matter in ways that shape our world. Photons trigger changes in proteins in the eye to enable vision; sunlight splits water into hydrogen and oxygen and creates chemicals through photosynthesis; light causes electrons to flow in the semiconductors that make up solar cells; and new devices for...
For the first time, an experiment shows that atomic nuclei can become transparent At the high-brilliance synchrotron light source PETRA III, a team of DESY scientists headed by Dr. Ralf Röhlsberger has succeeded in making atomic nuclei transparent with the help of X-ray light. At the same time they have also discovered a new way to realize an optically controlled light switch that can be used to manipulate light with light, an important ingredient for efficient future quantum computers....
Ability to probe deep below material surfaces should be boon for nanoscale devices The expression "beauty's only skin-deep" has often been applied to the chemistry of materials because so much action takes place at the surface. However, for many of the materials in today's high technologies, such as semiconductors and superconductors, once a device is fabricated it is the electronic structures below the surface, in the bulk of the material or in buried layers, that determine its...
New multiferroic mechanism could lead to next-generation memory and sensing devicesResearchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory have observed a new way that magnetic and electric properties "” which have a long history of ignoring and counteracting each other "” can coexist in a special class of metals. These materials, known as multiferroics, could serve as the basis for the next generation of faster and energy-efficient logic, memory, and sensing...
Researchers can now see objects more precisely and faster at the nanoscale due to utilising the full color spectrum of synchrotron light, opening the way for faster 3D nanoimaging.This new methodology will provide for enhanced nanoimaging for studying bio samples for medical research, improved drug development and advanced materials for engineering.Using the Advanced Photon Source, a synchrotron facility in Chicago, USA, researchers from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coherent X-ray Science...
Scientists from Finland and France have developed a new synchrotron X-ray technique that may revolutionize the chemical analysis of rare materials like meteoric rock samples or fossils. The results have been published on 29 May 2011 in Nature Materials as an advance online publication.Life, as we know it, is based on the chemistry of carbon and oxygen. The three-dimensional distribution of their abundance and chemical bonds has been difficult to study up to now in samples where these elements...
Chemical images now much more detailedWith intensity a million times brighter than sunlight, a new synchrotron-based imaging technique offers high-resolution pictures of the molecular composition of tissues with unprecedented speed and quality. Carol Hirschmugl, a physicist at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM), led a team of researchers from UWM, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) to demonstrate these new...
Ultra-short X-ray beams produced at the University of Michigan could one day serve as more sensitive medical diagnostic tools, and they could work like strobe lights to allow researchers to observe chemical reactions that happen in quadrillionths of a second.The researchers used the HERCULES high-intensity, table-top laser to create X-ray beams that rival those made in expensive and massive synchrotron particle accelerators. The National Synchrotron Light Source II, for example, under...
