LCLS-II

A series of awards were presented at the 2026 Bay Area Light Sources Joint Users' Meeting.

The region’s three powerful X-ray light sources attract researchers who study atomic-scale processes to drive innovation in batteries, biomedicine and more.

New research reveals how a molecule absorbs light and gains a proton while its watery environment reorganizes in response. 

SLAC researchers and collaborators trained a neural network that can use ion momentum to work backward and predict the pre-blast geometry of a molecule.

Water is all around us, yet its surface layer is surprisingly hard to study. Experiments at SLAC’s X-ray laser are bringing it into focus.

Experiments running at these higher pulse rates will allow scientists to capture ultrafast processes with greater precision, collect data more efficiently and explore phenomena that were previously out of reach.

The SLAC team is developing digital twins – powered by AI and high-performance computing – to help quickly shape high-quality particle beams for the lab’s X-ray and ultrafast facilities.

After a major upgrade, SLAC's X-ray free-electron laser is 10,000 times brighter and thousands of times faster. Now, researchers are using LCLS to observe electrons in real time as they move across molecules.

Researchers used LCLS to capture the ultrafast motion of electrons inside molecules – at scales never before possible. 

They used SLAC’s ultrafast X-ray laser to follow the impact of a single electron moving within a molecule during an entire chemical reaction.

With a suite of reimagined instruments, researchers take up scientific inquiries that were out of reach just one year ago.