News & views: New Scientific Opportunities at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility

Approximately 400 participants learned about the latest scientific capabilities at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource (SSRL) and Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) during the 2013 Users' Meeting at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, October 1–4, 2013. The Users' Meeting included more than a dozen workshops as well as scientific awards, poster presentations, and talks on the latest scientific trends, challenges, and opportunities.     

The fast show with x‐rays and electrons

On October 20–26, 2004, more than 350 people participated in the 31st Annual Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory (SSRL) Users' Meeting, workshops, and social events. The presentation by SSRL Director Keith Hodgson in the opening session focused on the success in 2004 in getting SPEAR3 and the SSRL beam lines operating and productive. Looking towards the future, he discussed the exciting new opportunities at the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS), an X-ray free electron laser. Hodgson emphasized the importance of safety when conducting experiments at SSRL, a point strongly reiterated by SLAC Director Jonathan Dorfan.     

National school on Neutron and X‐ray scattering alumni presentations

The 4th joint Stanford–Berkeley summer school on synchrotron radiation and its applications in physical science was held June 12–17, 2005, at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC). The Stanford–Berkeley summer school is jointly organized by Stanford University, University of California Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), and the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory (SSRL). Since 2001, Anders Nilsson (Stanford/SSRL) and Dave Attwood (UC Berkeley) have been the organizers of this annual weeklong summer school, which alternates each year between Stanford and Berkeley. The summer school provides lecture programs on synchrotron radiation and its broad range of scientific applications in the physical science as well as visits to the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory and the Advanced Light Source (ALS), where the students also have the opportunity to experience a beam line.     

User Training at SSRL: Crystallography,X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy,Small-Angle X-ray Scattering,and X-ray Scattering Techniques

The Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource (SSRL) is a national scientific user facility at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory that provides high-brightness X-ray beams, innovative experimental facilities, and expert scientific support as a resource to study our world at the atomic and molecular level. Operating within this context and being closely associated with a major research university (Stanford), SSRL is strongly committed to providing unique educational experiences, and serves as a vital training ground for future generations of scientists and engineers. As part of this program, SSRL oversees a series of schools and workshops each year which deliver theoretical, experimental, and hands-on training by leading experts in their respective fields. Several of the courses held this year, attended by graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, educators and junior/senior investigators, are described in this report.     

Spring school on magnetic properties of condensed matter

The sixth joint Stanford-Berkeley summer school on synchrotron radiation and its applications in physical science was held on August 17?22, 2008, at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC). The Stanford-Berkeley summer school is jointly organized by the Stanford University, University of California Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), and the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource (SSRL). Anders Nilsson (Stanford) and Dave Attwood (Berkeley) have been the organizers of this one-week summer school since 2001. It alternates between Stanford and Berkeley. The summer school provides lecture programs on synchrotron radiation and its broad range of scientific applications in the physical science, visits to the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource and the Advanced Light Source, where the students also have the opportunity to join a beamline. The program is designed to introduce students and postdocs to the fundamental properties of synchrotron radiation and how to understand and use spectroscopic, scattering and microscopy techniques in various scientific applications. Particular emphasis is given to examples from physics, chemistry, and material science.     

Second User Workshop on High-Power Lasers at the Linac Coherent Light Source

The second international workshop on the physics enabled by the unique combination of high-power lasers with the world-class Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) free-electron X-ray laser beam was held in Stanford, CA, on October 7–8, 2014. The workshop was co-organized by UC Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley, Lawrence Livermore, and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratories. More than 120 scientists, including 40 students and postdoctoral scientists who are working in high-intensity laser-matter interactions, fusion research, and dynamic high-pressure science came together from North America, Europe, and Asia. The focus of the second workshop was on scientific highlights and the lessons learned from 16 new experiments that were performed on the Matter in Extreme Conditions (MEC) instrument since the first workshop was held one year ago.     

PULSE Ultrafast X-ray Summer School

The Third Annual Ultrafast X-ray Summer School (UXSS 2009) was held from June 15–19, 2009, at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC) and sponsored by the PULSE Institute for Ultrafast Energy Science. The summer school was a weeklong residential event that brought together about 100 students, post-doctoral researchers, and other young and established scientists from diverse backgrounds. Particular emphasis was given to new scientific opportunities enabled by the world's first hard X-ray free electron laser, the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS), which underwent a spectacular start-up only months before.     

ALS infrared Spectromicroscopy and future infrared sources workshop

Diffraction limited, high-repetition rate, hard X-ray sources such as an Energy Recovery Linac (ERL) or an Ultimate Storage Ring (USR) have the potential to open new avenues of scientific inquiry and uncover discoveries not possible with existing facilities. These sources have properties never realized before: intense, highly-coherent, diffraction-limited X-ray beams pulsing at MHz to GHz repetition rates with pulse widths from 50 femtoseconds to tens of picoseconds. Hoping to understand new science horizons, CHESS, SSRL, DESY, and the Photon Factory at KEK joined forces to organize six topical workshops on “Science at the Hard X-ray Diffraction Limit” – hence the name XDL2011. With support from the U.S. National Science Foundation and U.S. Department of Energy, Cornell hosted this event aiming to maximize discussion of new ideas and coax invited speakers and participants to brainstorm new experiments that they would like to do, but are impractical with existing sources. To help encourage and educate future X-ray scientists and facility users, the NSF also provided funds to support travel costs for a diverse group of student and post-doctoral participants.     

First FEL Winter School in Taiwan

The free electron laser (FEL) is widely regarded as the core technology of the fourth-generation light source in the international scientific community, as the development of such technology is making remarkable progress in recent years. FEL offers scientists the means to probe the nano-scale and outer-space world beyond the fullest extent of the existing scientific boundary. Compared to the cost of building a large-scale advanced research facility, the investments of the most ambitious FEL facilities, such as the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) in the U.S. and SPring-8 Angstrom Compact Free Electron Laser (SACLA) in Japan, are much more expensive. However, there is great interest in the development of smaller and more affordable FELs.     

Those Wonderful Pioneer Years of SSRL: A Personal Reflection

It is a rare moment in the history of science when a new capability is born that transforms our ability to “see” what is happening in the world in which we live. The use of the light emitted from accelerating electrons as they are bent by magnetic fields that was pioneered at SSRL in the 1970s is not just another example of this, but arguably is the most important development in the history of science in enabling us to “see” the world of electrons and atoms. There is, in addition, a special feature of the new capability enabled by synchrotron radiation: it is likely to remain, in the future, the best way to see the microscopic world forever. This is because the light used to “see” does not only have all the intensity one needs, but also because all its properties can be adjusted so as to provide the ideal illumination for the particular thing one wants to “see.” Thus, literally what was born at SSRL, which has since then been and will be continually improved, will forever provide our species the ability to “see” and understand the microscopic world in which we live.     

Beamline AR‐NW12A: high‐throughput beamline for macromolecular crystallography at the Photon Factory

AR‐NW12A is an in‐vacuum undulator beamline optimized for high‐throughput macromolecular crystallography experiments as one of the five macromolecular crystallography (MX) beamlines at the Photon Factory. This report provides details of the beamline design, covering its optical specifications, hardware set‐up, control software, and the latest developments for MX experiments. The experimental environment presents state‐of‐the‐art instrumentation for high‐throughput projects with a high‐precision goniometer with an adaptable goniometer head, and a UV‐light sample visualization system. Combined with an efficient automounting robot modified from the SSRL SAM system, a remote control system enables fully automated and remote‐access X‐ray diffraction experiments.     

Single shot spatial and temporal coherence properties of the SLAC Linac Coherent Light Source in the hard x-ray regime

We measured the transverse and longitudinal coherence properties of the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) at SLAC in the hard x-ray regime at 9 keV photon energy on a single shot basis. Speckle patterns recorded in the forward direction from colloidal nanoparticles yielded the transverse coherence properties of the focused LCLS beam. Speckle patterns from a gold nanopowder recorded with atomic resolution allowed us to measure the shot-to-shot variations of the spectral properties of the x-ray beam. The focused beam is in the transverse direction fully coherent with a mode number close to 1. The average number of longitudinal modes behind the Si(111) monochromator is about 14.5 and the average coherence time τ(c)=(2.0±1.0) fc. The data suggest a mean x-ray pulse duration of (29±14) fs behind the monochromator for (100±14) fc electron pulses.     

Dynamics of Self-Organized and Self-Assembled Structures,by Rashmi C. Desai and Raymond Kapral

The arrival of the first hard X-ray free electron laser facilities promises new advances in structural dynamics and nanoscale imaging that will have impact across the sciences. This introductory review is intended to cover the basic physics behind this potential and illustrate the current state-of-the-art by discussing a number of recent findings from the LCLS facility at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Centre (SLAC). We concentrate on the new science using these light sources rather than the new light source technology itself, although a brief introduction to the operation of LCLS is given. Emphasis is placed upon the new regime of high intensity X-ray matter interaction physics with ultrashort X-ray pulses. We discuss how the unique combination of X-ray parameters will open new opportunities for time resolved structural studies and how the high brightness enables a new class of coherent diffraction X-ray imaging. The potential importance of this new imaging method in the study of nanostructures and biological systems at the sub-cellular and molecular level will be outlined.     

Some aspects in accelerator structure studies at SLAC

Recent progress in the accelerator structure studies at SLAC is reported. This paper covers the room temperature accelerator structures for the ILC e⁺/e^－ sources; RF structures for some photon science projects including RF deflectors and the LCLS RF gun; the high gradient accelerator R &; D in a global CLIC collaboration for the future multi-TeV linear colliders.     

A compact warm ring for industrial applications

The ultrafast, high brightness X-ray free electron laser (XFEL) sources of the future have the potential to revolutionize the study of time-dependent phenomena in the natural sciences. These linear accelerator (linac) sources will generate femtosecond (fs) X-ray pulses with peak flux comparable to conventional lasers, and far exceeding all other X-ray sources. The Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) has pioneered the development of linac science and technology for decades, and since 2000 SLAC and the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory (SSRL) have focused on the development of linac based ultrafast electron and X-ray sources.     

Resonant X-ray magnetic scattering has gone soft

The Linac Coherent Light Source [1] (LCLS) at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory is preparing for the arrival of its first scientific users in the fall of 2009. LCLS is the world's first free-electron in the spectral range 800?8,000?eV, producing intense, sub-picosecond pulses of Xrays with very high spatial coherence. The accelerator facility has been commissioned in stages, beginning in April 2007 [2] with the injector linac and culminating in December 2008 [3] with the first transport of electrons through the complete beam path. On April 10, 2009, the LCLS Project team was rewarded for years of planning, design, construction, and checkout with a dream-come-true: as undulators were placed on the beam path one-by-one, the laser simply turned on without drama in the course of one hour [4]. First visible evidence of light amplification at 8,000?eV was observed on a fluorescent screen with ten undulators in place, at which point a highly collimated spot of X-rays could be discerned in the center of the spontaneous radiation pattern. After just four days of further checkout, the intensity of this spot increased smoothly and exponentially to the threshold of “saturation” at full power with just 20 of 33 undulators in place. The commissioning team was faced with a mixture of shock and euphoria. The Project team has spent years focused on everything that could possibly go wrong, and what to do about each concern. Speaking for myself, I found I was mentally unprepared for the special case of NOTHING going wrong! In fact, a critical aspect of the FEL performance was significantly better than design goals—the gain length (the distance the electron beam must travel in undulators to increase X-ray power by a factor e) proved to be just 3.5 meters. With this gain length, and room for 33 undulators in the tunnel, we find we have ten more spares! The shutter was closed at about midnight, temporarily preventing the electron beam entering the undulator. At 8:00 A.M. the next morning, the shutter was retracted to reveal the FEL producing an 8,000?eV laser beam without need for operator intervention.     

Meeting Report: SSRL School on Synchrotron X-ray Scattering Techniques in Materials and Environmental Sciences: Theory and Application

Modern synchrotron-based X-ray scattering (SR-XRS) techniques offer the ability to probe nano- and atomic-scale structures, interfaces, and order/disorder relationships that govern the properties of advanced technological and environmental materials. Important materials studied at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory (SSRL) include thin films and interfaces, nanoparticles, amorphous materials, solutions, polymers, and bacteriogenic minerals. Good planning and a working knowledge of beam lines and techniques are required to successfully conduct SR-XRS measurements. This second annual School at SSRL on Synchrotron X-ray Scattering Techniques in Materials and Environmental Sciences, held at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) on May 15–17, 2007, provided a practical users' guide to planning and conducting scattering measurements at SSRL beam lines, with an emphasis on information that cannot be found in textbooks. More than 45 researchers, mostly graduate students and postdocs, participated in this crosscutting workshop. Attendees represented a variety of fields including material sciences, applied physics, environmental sciences, and chemistry.     

Theoretical Analysis of Radiation Properties of X-Ray Free-Electron Lasers

Radiophysics and Quantum Electronics - We perform a comparative analysis of the radiation of X-ray free-electron lasers (FELs) LCLS, PAL-XFEL, SwissFEL, SACLA, FLASH2, and European XFEL, as well as...     

SSRL Fifth Annual School on Synchrotron X-ray Scattering Techniques in Materials and Environmental Sciences: Theory and Application

Synchrotron-based X-ray scattering (SR-XRS) techniques offer the ability to probe nano- and atomic-scale structure that dictates the properties of advanced technological and environmental materials. Important materials studied at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource (SSRL) include organic and inorganic thin films and interfaces, nanoparticles, monolayers, complex oxides, solutions, polymers, minerals, and poorly crystalline materials. Good planning and a working knowledge of beam lines and techniques are required to successfully conduct SR-XRS measurements. This fifth annual School at SSRL on Synchrotron X-ray Scattering Techniques in Materials and Environmental Sciences, held at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory on June 1–3, 2010, provided a practical users' guide to planning and conducting scattering measurements at SSRL beam lines, with an emphasis on information that cannot be found in textbooks. More than 45 researchers, mostly graduate students and postdoctoral associates, participated in this workshop. Attendees represented a variety of fields including material sciences, chemical engineering, applied physics, environmental and earth sciences, and chemistry.