X-ray lasers can spot elusive electron motion

Scientists can track the movements of an atom's nucleus relatively easily, but electrons have proven elusive -- they move so fast that they tend to be reduced to blurs. Now, however, those movements could be crystal clear. Researchers at the SLAC Nat...

Physicists keep striking out in the search for dark matter

Space may be the final frontier, but we've barely begun to explore its underlying mechanics. For as much as humanity has discovered since we first looked to the heavens, we've only seen about 15 percent of the total matter in the universe. The other...

Stanford’s ‘accelerator on a chip’ could revolutionize medical care

When the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory at Stanford first opened its doors in 1966, it had already earned the distinction of housing the world's longest linear accelerator: A 3.2 kilometer monstrosity buried 25 feet under the gently rolling hil...

World’s most powerful X-ray laser will get 10,000 times brighter

If you think that Stanford's use of an super-bright X-ray laser to study the atom-level world is impressive, you're in for a treat. The school and its partners have started work on an upgrade, LCLS-II (Linac Coherent Light Source II), whose second la...

Diamond hones DOE X-ray laser howitzer to razor-sharp precision

DNP EMBARGOAug12Diamond hones DOE Xray laser howitzer to razorsharp precision

The US Department of Energy's SLAC accelerator lab already has a pretty useful X-ray laser -- the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS). But, recent modifications to the device have scientists drooling over its new found potential. Using a thin wafer of diamond, the Stanford-run lab filtered the beam to a lone frequency, then amplified it in a process called "self-seeding." That's given the world's most powerful X-ray laser even more punch by tossing out unneeded wavelengths which were reducing its intensity. The tweaks allow scientists across many fields to finesse and image matter at the atomic level, giving them more power to study and change it. According to the lab, researchers who came to observe the experiment from other X-ray laser facilities "were grinning from ear to ear" at the possibility of integrating the tech into their own labs. The SLAC team claims they could still add 10 times more punch to the LCLS with further optimization, putting the laser in a class by itself -- X-ray-wise, anyway.

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