New research shows that when a bunch of electrons zooms through the middle of a ring-shaped laser beam, the bunch can wind up with higher quality and generate a brighter X-ray beam.
Light-driven reactions are at the heart of human vision, photosynthesis and solar power generation. Seeing the very first step opens the door to observing chemical bonds forming and breaking.
Siegfried Glenzer's team and collaborators from Tel Aviv University are working on a method that could make proton accelerators 100 times smaller without giving up any of their power.
Understanding nature’s process could inform the next generation of artificial photosynthetic systems that produce clean and renewable energy from sunlight and water.
Physicists at SLAC and Stanford propose that the influence of cosmic rays on early life may explain nature’s preference for a uniform “handedness” among biology’s critical molecules.