**** **** **** * * * * * * **** **** **** * * * * * * **** **** * * **** HEADLINES - a digital monthly publication
Contents of This Issue:
1. BESAC Votes to Move Forward on LCLS Conceptual Design
(contact: Jo Stöhr - stohr@ssrl.slac.stanford.edu)
On Tuesday, October 10, the DOE Basic Energy Sciences Advisory Committee (BESAC) heard the scientific case for the Linac Coherent Light Source, or LCLS, that we hope to build at SLAC in the near future. Eric Rohlfing (DOE) gave an introduction placing LCLS in the context of table top x-ray laser sources and short pulse programs at 3rd generation sources and, in particular, the findings of the Leone Committee which requested the formulation of a stronger scientific case. Keith Hodgson then presented an overview of the LCLS project and addressed the flexible use of the machine ranging from probing to manipulation of matter. He also pointed out the ongoing x-ray physics program (the sixth experiment which was not separately presented), especially the efforts in pulse width reduction and improvement in longitudinal coherence. Five ensuing scientific presentations were given by Dan Imre (BNL) on femtochemistry, Brian Stephenson (APS) on nanoscale dynamics, Phil Bucksbaum (U. Michigan) on atomic physics, Dick Lee (LLNL) on plasma physics and Janos Hajdu (Uppsala U.) on biomolecule imaging.
BESAC reconvened on Wednesday morning (October 11) to discuss their
impressions and to formulate a recommendation to DOE BES. Of the 16 voting
members (Z.-X. Shen and Jo Stöhr abstained from the discussion and voting
because of conflict of interest) all commented favorably on the scientific
quality of the presentations. BESAC then voted unanimously to recommend moving
forward with the LCLS conceptual design, pending positive mail peer reviews.
With SPEAR3 in the near term and LCLS possibly coming on line in the 2nd half of
this decade, a very exciting future lies ahead of us!
2. Call for Proposals - Reminder
(contact: Lisa Dunn - lisa@ssrl.slac.stanford.edu)
We wish to remind our users that the fall deadline for submission of beam time proposals (other than macromolecular crystallography) has been moved from October 1 to November 1. For this scheduling round, we will extend the deadline by an additional week to give you time to meet the changed deadlines. Macromolecular crystallography proposals are due December 1.
(more information about proposal submissions can be obtained at:
http://www-ssrl.slac.stanford.edu/call-for-proposals.html)
3. SSRL 27th Annual Users' Meeting and Workshops Attract a Large Audience and
Offer Exciting Agendas
(contacts: Jan Lüning - luning@ssrl.slac.stanford.edu
and Lisa Dunn -
lisa@ssrl.slac.stanford.edu)
The 27th Annual SSRL Users' Meeting, held October 19-20, organized by co-chairs Paul Foster (Exelixis) and Jan Lüning (SSRL) was exceptionally well attended. The meeting highlighted recent achievements in science and technology made possible by research done at SSRL and elsewhere. The meeting opened with SLAC Director Jonathan Dorfan's welcome to the participants. SSRL Director, Keith Hodgson, followed with an overview talk covering achievements and activities for the last year. He also gave tribute to two LBNL scientists with strong SSRL connections, Melvin Klein (1921-2000) and Klaus Halbach (1925-2000), who made significant contributions to synchrotron development and research over the years and will be missed. Jo Stöhr gave a presentation on the opportunities with SPEAR3 and the LCLS scientific case. Dr. Patricia Dehmer, the Director the DOE Office of Basic Energy Sciences, gave a report from Washington, including excellent news on the BES budget in FY2001.
Other sessions on Thursday were devoted to X-ray Materials Science, Biological Sciences and SSRL Specific Reports. During the late afternoon poster session, student poster prizes were awarded to Tom Regan (Stanford U.) for his poster on the "Study of Chemical Effects at Metal/Oxide Interfaces by X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy", Weiwei Gu (UC Davis) for "A Refined Model for D. gigas Ni-Fe Hydrogenase", and Colleen Hansel (Stanford U.) for her submission on "Microbially-induced Transformations of Fe-Cr Biominerals."
The Farrel W. Lytle Award was presented to Roger Prince (ExxonMobil) at the Users' Meeting dinner. Roger was nominated for being an "…outstanding industrial scientist making important technical and scientific discoveries using synchrotron radiation and for being remarkably effective at fostering collaborations between industrial and academic users and SSRL staff." Graham George (SSRL) made the presentation and went down an amusing laundry list of Roger's experimental sample interests from sulfur in fuels to bee pollen.
Meeting activities resumed again on Friday morning with an Environmental Science session. After the coffee break Bruce Clemens, outgoing Chair of the SSRL Users' Organization gave a status update on the committee's activities in FY2000, most notably, the very successful effort by the user community in communicating the importance of the science being funded by the DOE to their political representatives.
The ensuing sessions were devoted to talks by young scientists and to highlights of the Wednesday and Saturday workshops that were organized to explore opportunities in new technologies and beam line instrumentation.
(For more detailed SSRL Users' Meeting program information see
http://www-ssrl.slac.stanford.edu/conferences/ssrl27/program.html/
In addition to the main Users' Meeting, there were five workshops held during the week. On the Wednesday preceding the meeting, three onsite workshops titled "Application of Synchrotron Techniques to Materials Issues in Art and Archeology," Sulfur K-edge X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy: Applications, Opportunities and Future Directions in the Biological, Environmental and Chemical Sciences" and "Soft X-ray Speckles: Nanoscale Dynamics in Liquids and Solids" engaged about 100 participants. A joint ALS-SSRL workshop titled "X-ray Microdiffraction and Its Application to Problems in Materials Science" was also held on Wednesday at the ALS. On the Saturday after the meeting another 45 scientists discussed "New Scientific Opportunities in Ultra-high Resolution Spectroscopies: from Nanomaterials to Complex Quantum Systems."
Brief summaries of the workshops will soon be posted to the web at:
http://www-ssrl.slac.stanford.edu/conferences/ssrl27/workshop-summaries.html
4. Herman Winick Surprised with DOE Distinguished Associate Award
As noted above, Pat Dehmer, the Director of DOE-BES, gave a report from
Washington during the opening session of the SSRL Users' Meeting. Dr. Dehmer and
colleague, Dr. William Oosterhuis, BES Solid State Physics, surprised the
meeting participants, and the awardee, by presenting the prestigious United
States Department of Energy Distinguished Associate Award to Herman Winick. The
citation, signed by the Secretary of Energy, Bill Richardson, commends Herman
"For your many accomplishments, contributions, and leadership in the
development of modern synchrotron radiation sources and insertion devices to
make them even more effective as X-ray sources. This includes your exemplary
service to the Department of Energy and the world community in promoting this
technology across disciplinary and geographical boundaries over a period of many
years". The award had been a well-kept secret and Herman was visibly
touched to have become the recipient of it.
5. FY2001 Experimental Run Startup Almost Complete
(contacts: Hal Tompkins - tompkins@ssrl.slac.stanford.edu,
Ed Guerra -
guerra@ssrl.slac.stanford.edu,
Teresa Troxel - ttroxel@ssrl.slac.stanford.edu)
Preparations for the November 2000 user run are well underway. Beam has been
steered into all beam line end stations except for Beam Line 11. Mirror
alignment is still underway on Beam Line 11 and the line should be opened up for
beam soon. Lifetimes are as typical at this point of the startup and improving
rapidly. We expect to begin the run with 2 fills/day as usual. Horizontal and
vertical steering is in the final stages and the beam lines and equipment are
being primed for users. Overall, it has been a remarkably successful shutdown
with a very large amount of work accomplished, followed by a very smooth startup
to this point. We look forward to another outstanding user run.
6. Magic Fingers Successful at Correcting Beam Line 11 Nonlinear Fields
(contact: James Safranek - safranek@ssrl.slac.stanford.edu)
Beam Line 11, the most recently installed wiggler at SPEAR, produces a large nonlinear perturbation of the electron beam dynamics. At 2.25 GeV, beam could not be injected or even stored with the wiggler at its full 2 Tesla field. At 3 GeV, the wiggler reduced the stored beam lifetime by about 30 percent. The nonlinear fields are associated with the narrow wiggler poles. Such an effect had not previously been observed at any light source. Once the problem was characterized and understood, "magic finger" corrector magnets were designed and built by the wiggler manufacturer, Danfysik, and installed during this year's shutdown. We have now succeeded in injecting 100 mA with BL11 closed to its full 2 Tesla field. Many thanks to all those who helped solve this interesting and sticky problem!
7. Free-Electron Laser Workshop Held in Arcidosso, Italy
(contacts: Max Cornacchia - cornacchia@ssrl.slac.stanford.edu,
Ingolf Lindau -
lindau@ssrl.slac.stanford.edu,
Claudio Pellegrini - pellegrini@physics.ucla.edu)
The 20th Advanced ICFA Beam Dynamics Workshop on "The Physics of, and the Science with, X-ray Free-Electron Lasers" took place in Arcidosso, Italy from September 10-15, 2000. The Workshop was sponsored by the International Committee for Future Accelerators, the DOE, UCLA, SLAC, the Deutches Elektronen-Synchrotron and LBNL, together with local authorities of the Tuscany, Grosseto and Arcidosso areas. The Workshop was chaired by M. Cornacchia and I. Lindau (SSRL), and C. Pellegrini (UCLA). Seventy-five scientists attended the workshop organized as plenary and parallel sessions and with many lively discussions, during and after the regular workshop schedule.
There were two invited lectures on Monday, September 11, to open the subjects and two summary talks in the afternoon of Friday, September 15. All other presentations were either informal or in the form of posters. Two topic groups were organized: "Physics and Technology of the XFEL" with introductory talks by Kwang-Je Kim (ANL) and Jamie Rosenzweig (UCLA), and coordinated by Alberto Renieri (ENEA-Frascati); and "Science with the XFEL" coordinated by Mark Sutton (McGill U.) with introductory talks by Andreas Freund (ESRF) and Ingolf Lindau.
For notes reflecting the summary talks of the coordinators and the
impressions and recollections of the organizers, see:
http://www-ssrl.slac.stanford.edu/lcls/Workshops/10-15SEP2000/
The American Institute of Physics will publish the proceedings of the
Workshop.
SSRL Headlines is published electronically monthly to inform SSRL users, sponsors and other interested people about happenings at SSRL. SSRL is a national synchrotron user facility operated by Stanford University for the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Basic Energy Sciences. Additional support for the structural biology program is provided by the DOE Office of Biological and Environmental Research, the NIH National Center for Research Resources and the NIH Institute for General Medical Sciences. Additional information about SSRL and its operation and schedules is available from the SSRL WWW site: http://www-ssrl.slac.stanford.edu/
You can subscribe or remove your name from the distribution list by sending a brief email with your request to Lisa Dunn, editor, at lisa@ssrl.slac.stanford.edu.
