A new system at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory's X-ray laser narrows a rainbow spectrum of X-ray colors to a more intense band of light, creating a much more powerful way to view fine details in samples at the scale of atoms and molecules.

A cooperative agreement with Palo-Alto based CPI opens the door to routine commercial manufacturing of these powerful vacuum tube devices, which convert electron beams into microwaves that are used to accelerate subatomic particles.

In an advance that could dramatically shrink particle accelerators for science and medicine, researchers used a laser to accelerate electrons at a rate 10 times higher than conventional technology in a nanostructured glass chip smaller than a grain of rice.

Dao Xiang, a SLAC accelerator physicist, has received an international award for his work on a technique for tuning an electron beam with a laser to produce X-ray pulses with more uniform and predictable properties.