The U.S. Department of Energy's (DoE) SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park, CA, has dedicated the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS), billed as the world's first and most powerful x-ray laser.
The $420 million scientific facility is designed to perform basic scientific research and drive applications in energy and environmental sciences, drug development, and materials engineering.
According to the DoE, the laser can view matter on a scale of individual atoms and on time scales fast enough to see atomic motion and changes in the chemical bonds between them, effectively making stop-motion movies of the basic processes of matter and life for the first time.
LCLS involves making ultrabright, ultrafast x-ray pulses from a high-energy electron beam. It was first conceived in 1992, with the notion that SLAC's existing linear accelerator could potentially form the backbone of the laser.
Early results have involved imaging bacteria and parts of the photosynthetic system found in plants.
LCLS has also been used to strip atoms, such as neon, completely bare of their electrons from the inside out for the first time with its high energy x-rays. Current and planned experiments will investigate more complicated molecules and begin to piece together the first movies of atomic dynamics in action.
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