View of the BaBar detector (about six meters in diameter) with staff scientist Michael Kelsey analyzing problems during a shutdown of SLAC’s PEP-II electron-positron storage rings.
Electrons accelerated by SLAC’s linear accelerator ender the LCLS undulator hall and run a gauntlet of 32 powerful undulators. Each undulator contains 224 magnets whose alternating poles force the electrons to zigzag violently and radiate X-rays. By the time they...
Some members of the Single Particle Imaging team, launched last year at SLAC, participated in the latest experiment in late July and early August at SLAC's Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) X-ray laser. LCLS scientist Andy Aquila (seventh from the...
This animation explains how researchers accelerate positrons with a plasma – a method that may help boost the energy and shrink the size of future linear particle colliders.
This movie introduces LCLS-II, a future light source at SLAC. It will generate over 8,000 times more light pulses per second than today’s most powerful X-ray laser, LCLS, and produce an almost continuous X-ray beam that on average will be...
In this illustration, two protons collide at high energy, producing a Higgs boson that instantly decays, producing two tau particles. The rest of the energy from the collision sprays outward in two jets (pink cones). Measuring the angle between these...
In this artistic rendering, a magnetic pulse (right) and X-ray laser light (left) converge on a superconductor material to study the behavior of its electrons.
This animation shows molecular building blocks joining the tip of a growing nanowire. Each block consists of a diamondoid – the smallest possible bit of diamond – attached to sulfur and copper atoms (yellow and brown spheres). Like LEGO blocks...
Researchers use powerful X-rays to reveal molecular structures at the site where drug compounds interact with cell receptors. These structures help point the way to designing medicines of the future.
The Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource (SSRL), a directorate of the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, is an Office of Science User Facility operated for the U.S. Department of Energy by Stanford University. SSRL provides synchrotron radiation, a name given to x-rays...
