Technical Report: Absolute Radiometric Calibration at NSLS

For nearly 20 years the U3c and X8a beamlines at the National Synchrotron Light Source (NSLS) have been used for absolute calibration and X-ray characterization of detectors and optics. The motivation behind this capability has been the need of the U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Agency (DOE-NNSA) programs at other U.S. national laboratories (Livermore, Sandia, and Los Alamos) to provide diagnostics capabilities for high-temperature plasma physics experiments. For example, specific applications of regularly NSLS-calibrated diagnostics are found at Livermore's National Ignition Facility (NIF) and Sandia's Z machine.     

NSLS and NSLS-II: The Foundation and the Future of Synchrotron Light Sources

On September 30, 2014, after 32 years of outstanding operations, the National Synchrotron Light Source (NSLS) at Brookhaven National Laboratory was shuttered for the last time.     

New products

Arosy future was forecast for Brookhaven National Laboratory's (BNL) user facilities at the first-ever joint meeting of the user communities for the National Synchrotron Light Source (NSLS) and the Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN), held May 15–17, 2006.     

Living on the K-edge: Resonant scattering studies of electronic order in transition metal compounds

Construction has begun on the National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS-II), a state-of-the-art, third-generation medium energy storage ring to be built at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL).     

Membrane Protein Structures 2015 Meeting

The Membrane Protein Structures (MPS) 2015 Meeting was the fifth in a series of very successful meetings on the technologies and materials that are critical for membrane protein production and structure determination. The program focused on a variety of recent transformative technologies, and on the illuminating membrane protein structures they have enabled. This symposium was held at the Advanced Photon Source (APS) at Argonne National Laboratory April 10–12, 2015. The meeting was co-hosted by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH)—National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) and National Cancer Institute (NCI)—Structural Biology Facility GM/CA, and Northeastern Collaborative Access Team (NE-CAT). The conference was well-attended with over 230 attendees from around the globe and included 37 invited speakers in nine sessions, 63 posters, and 20 “lightning talks.”     

Technical Report: Recent Major Improvements to the ALS Sector 5 Macromolecular Crystallography Beamlines

In a project originally aimed at X-ray proximity lithography (XRL) for semiconductor manufacturing and funded by A?STAR (Agency for Science, Technology and Research, previously National Science and Technology Board (NSTB)) and Ministry of Education (MoE), the National University of Singapore (NUS) erected SSLS building (Figure 1a) and contracted Oxford Instruments (UK) to install their Helios 2 accelerator system in 2000.     

SSRL structural molecular biology summer school 2004

Exciting opportunities for early science at the National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS-II) drew over 260 participants to a workshop at Brookhaven National Laboratory, August 12–13, 2013. NSLS users planning to continue their work at the new facility joined prospective NSLS-II users to hear talks and debate possible research projects, beginning the process of creating a pool of experiment proposals and forming research teams.     

On damage diagnosis for a wind turbine blade using pattern recognition

With the increased interest in implementation of wind turbine power plants in remote areas, structural health monitoring (SHM) will be one of the key cards in the efficient establishment of wind turbines in the energy arena. Detection of blade damage at an early stage is a critical problem, as blade failure can lead to a catastrophic outcome for the entire wind turbine system. Experimental measurements from vibration analysis were extracted from a 9 m CX-100 blade by researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) throughout a full-scale fatigue test conducted at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and National Wind Technology Center (NWTC). The blade was harmonically excited at its first natural frequency using a Universal Resonant EXcitation (UREX) system. In the current study, machine learning algorithms based on Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs), including an Auto-Associative Neural Network (AANN) based on a standard ANN form and a novel approach to auto-association with Radial Basis Functions (RBFs) networks are used, which are optimised for fast and efficient runs. This paper introduces such pattern recognition methods into the wind energy field and attempts to address the effectiveness of such methods by combining vibration response data with novelty detection techniques.     

Recent developments of the Synchrotron Light source at NSRRC

Macromolecular crystallographic (MX) structure determination at synchrotron radiation sources has the potential to advance significantly through use of X-ray beams of one micron or smaller cross-sections. Recently, the MX Frontiers at the One Micron Scale Workshop explored structural biology scientific opportunities made possible through the use of micro-beams, and anticipated technical challenges for developers of MX beamlines at the National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS-II). More than 100 attendees participated in the workshop, which included one-and-a-half days of lectures, discussions, and a semi-formal poster session on July 23–24, 2009, at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL).     

The Early History and Personal Start-Up Stories of Synchrotron Radiation Research at Cornell University

Synchrotron radiation (SR) research at Cornell University is presently carried out at the Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source (CHESS), a National X-ray Facility on the Cornell Electron/Positron Storage Ring (CESR), a machine mainly dedicated to X-ray production and supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF). Each year, over a thousand scientists and students use a dozen X-ray stations for multidisciplinary research in physics, chemistry, biology, environmental and materials sciences, and engineering on a machine typically operating with compact undulators at 5.3 GeV and 100 to 200 mA.     

Shangjr (Felix) Gwo Assumes NSRRC Directorship

Shangjr (Felix) Gwo, a professor of physics at National Tsing Hua University (NTHU), assumed directorship of the National Synchrotron Radiation Research Center (NSRRC), Taiwan, on August 1, 2014. The handover ceremony was hosted by the chairman of the NSRRC Board of Trustees, Lih J. Chen. Chen commented positively on Gwo's comprehensive administrative experience, outstanding scientific research, and superb talent in industrial cooperation and leadership.     

Shock-wave compression of hydrogen isotopes condensed under megabar pressures

Experiments on shock wave compression of solid hydrogen (protium) up to 66 GPa and deuterium (in the initially liquid or solid phase) up to 123 GPa using spherical devices where a steel ball (impactor) is explosion-accelerated to 23 km/s are described. The experimental data are compared with those obtained by American researchers for liquid deuterium and protium, who used conventional explosives and light-gas guns as energy sources in the experiments carried out on the Z machine at Sandia National Labs, where an impactor was accelerated by an ultrahigh magnetic field, or on the NOVA laser at the Livermore National laboratory. Our data agree well with those derived by Sandia Labs.     

FANTM: First Article NIF Test Module

Designing and developing the 1.7- to 2.1-MJ power conditioning system (PCS) that power the flashlamps of the main and power amplifiers for the National Ignition Facility (NIF) lasers is one of several responsibilities assumed by Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) and Maxwell Physics International in support of the NIF Project. The NIF is currently being constructed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories (LLNL). The test facility that evolved over three years to satisfy the project requirements is called the First Article NIF Test Module (FANTM). It was built at SNL and operated for about 17000 shots to demonstrate component performance expectations over the lifetime of NIF. A few modules are used initially in the amplifier test phase of the project. The final NIF system requires at least 192 modules in the four capacitor bays. The paper briefly summarizes the final design of the FANTM facility and compares its performance with the predictions of circuit simulations for both normal operation and fault-mode response. Applying both the measured and modeled power pulse waveforms as input to a LLNL amplifier gain code indicates that the 20-capacitor PCS can satisfy the NIF requirement for an average gain coefficient of 5.00%/cm and can exceed 5.20%/cm with 24 capacitors     

Synchronously pumped femtosecond optical parametric oscillator at 1053 nm

A femtosecond optical parametric oscillator synchronously pumped by a Ti:Sapphire oscillator is reported. By the cavity length tuning, the signal wavelength is continuously tuned from 1000 to 1200 nm. The average output power of 32 mW is obtained at 1053 nm. The pulse width is measured to be 342 fs by intensity autocorrelation method. In addition, we observed bichromatic emission during the cavity length tuning process. Supported by the National High Technology Program Research and Development Program of China, the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 60490280 and 10804128), and the National Basic Research Program of China (Grant No. 2007CB815104)     

Ambient noise near the sea-route

Ambient noise data measured in an experiment conducted in shallow water near a sea-route were analyzed. It was observed that, at low frequency, the horizontal correlation has an obvious difference from that predicted by the classical ambient noise model. The theoretical analyses show that this phenomenon is caused by wind noise together with the discrete shipping noise nearby. An ambient noise model was proposed to include the effects caused by both the noise sources. Data measured at different times verify that the proposed model can be used to forecast the ambient noise field in shallow water near the sea-route. Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 10734100), the Knowledge Innovation Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. KZCX1-YW-12-2), the National Basic Research Program of China (Grant No. 2007CB209603), and the Open Foundation of China National Petroleum Corporation Key Laboratory (Grant No. GPKL0804)     

Imaging of antiferromagnetic domains by linear magnetic dichroism in photoemission microscopy of nio(100)

On September 19-21, 2005, the Synchrotron Environmental Science III (SES-III) conference was held at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), in Upton, New York. Continuing the tradition established by previous SES conferences held at Argonne National Lab, SES-III brought together the diverse community of scientists who apply synchrotron-based radiation techniques to study the biological and geochemical aspects of both local and global environmental issues. The conference included two days of topical sessions that addressed the application of innovative synchrotron methods in environmental science along with applications in bioavailability and remediation science. The third day included a workshop on microbeam methods. Attendees reported on environmental science activities conducted at synchrotron facilities worldwide.     

Influence of patterned TiO2/SiO2 dielectric multilayers for back and front mirror facetson GaN-based laser diodes

Ridge InGaN multi-quantum-well-structure （MQW） edge-emitting laser diodes （LDs） were grown on （0001） sapphire substrates by low-pressure metal-organic chemical vapour deposition （MOCVD）. The dielectric TiO2/SiO2 front and back facet coatings as cavity mirror facets of the LDs have been deposited with electron-beam evaporation method. The reflectivity of the designed front coating is about 50% and that of the back high reflective coating is as high as 99.9%. Under pulsed current injection at room temperature, the influences of the dielectric facets were discussed. The threshold current of the ridge GaN-based LDs was decreased after the deposition of the back high reflective dielectric mirrors and decreased again after the front facets were deposited. Above the threshold, the slope efficiency of the LDs with both reflective facets was larger than those with only back facets and without any reflective facets. It is important to design the reflectivity of the front facets for improving the performance of GaN-based LDs.     

Unitary and non-unitary representations of the complex inhomogeneous Lorentz group

We construct unitary and non-unitary representations of the complex inhomogeneous Lorentz group, including all its unitary, irreducible representations. We discuss the decomposition of these representations when they are restricted to the real inhomogeneous Lorentz group. We also discuss the representations of the Poincaré group for which the translation subgroup transforms under a not necessarily unitary representation. We summarize briefly the physical motivation for this study.Supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF-GP-58) while at Brandeis University and by the National Science Foundation, Grant NSF-GP-3465, while at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences.     

New In-Situ and Operando Facilities for Catalysis Science at NSLS-II: The Deployment of Real-Time,Chemical, and Structure-Sensitive X-ray Probes

The start of operations at the National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS-II) at Brookhaven National Laboratory heralded a new beginning for photon-science-based research capabilities in catalysis. This new facility builds on many years of pioneering work that was conducted at the NSLS synergistically by many scientists from academia, government labs, and industry. Over several decades, numerous discoveries in catalysis were driven through the emergence of an arsenal of tools at the NSLS that exploited the power of emerging X-ray methods encompassing scattering, spectroscopy, and imaging. In-situ and operando methodologies that coupled reactor environments directly with advanced analytical techniques paved a rapid path towards realizing an improved fundamental understanding at the frontiers of chemical science challenges of the day.     

Advanced Photon Source

The Advanced Photon Source (APS) at Argonne National Laboratory is preparing for a major upgrade, centered on installation of a multibend achromat (MBA) lattice that will dramatically improve the brightness, coherence, and stability of the X-ray beams.