SLAC's upgraded X-ray laser facility produces first light
Monday, July 20, 2020 - 09:40
in Physics & Chemistry
Just over a decade ago in April 2009, the world's first hard X-ray free-electron laser (XFEL) produced its first light at the U.S. Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. The Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) generated X-ray pulses a billion times brighter than anything that had come before. Since then, its performance has enabled fundamental new insights in a number of scientific fields, from creating "molecular movies" of chemistry in action to studying the structure and motion of proteins for new generations of pharmaceuticals and replicating the processes that create "diamond rain" within giant planets in our solar system.