Lawrence Livermore Lab (LLNL) researchers and international collaborators have created the shortest, purest X-ray laser pulses ever achieved, realizing a 45-year-old prediction and ultimately opening the door to new medicines, devices and materials.
The researchers aimed radiation from the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS), located at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), at a cell containingneon gas, setting off an avalanche of femtosecond-duration X-ray emissions to create a new “atomic X-ray laser” in the kiloelectronvolt energy regime.
“X-rays give us a penetrating view into the world of atoms and molecules,” said physicist Nina Rohringer, a former LLNL postdoc, now a group leader at Max Planck Society’s Advanced Study Group. She collaborated with researchers from SLAC, LLNL and Colorado State University.
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