Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS)

With SLAC’s X-ray laser, scientists captured a virus changing shape and rearranging its genome to invade a cell.

Tripling the energy and refining the shape of optical laser pulses at LCLS’s Matter in Extreme Conditions instrument allows researchers to recreate higher-pressure conditions and explore unsolved questions relevant to fusion energy, plasma physics and materials science.

Zeeshan Ahmed, Frederico Fiuza and Emilio Nanni will each receive about $2.5 million over five years to pursue cutting-edge research into cosmic inflation, plasma acceleration and using terahertz waves to accelerate particles.

Over the next five years they’ll work on getting significantly more information about how catalysts work and improving biological imaging methods.

A flash of green laser followed by pulses of X-rays, and mere nanoseconds later an extraterrestrial form of ice has formed.

The research team was able to watch energy from light flow through atomic ripples in a molecule. Such insights may provide new ways to develop a class of materials that improve efficiency and reduce the size of applications like solar...

Extraordinarily precise measurements -- within millionths of a billionth of a second and a billionth of a hair's breadth -- show this ‘electron-phonon coupling’ can be far stronger than predicted, and could potentially play a role in unconventional superconductivity.

A makeover of the historic Beam Switch Yard prepares the lab for the installation of the LCLS X-ray laser upgrade.

A new X-ray laser technique allows scientists to home in on these single-electron triggers to better understand organic molecules that respond to light, including receptors in your eyes, plastic products and DNA building blocks that need to protect themselves from...

With SLAC’s X-ray laser and synchrotron, scientists measured exactly how much energy goes into keeping this crucial bond from triggering a cell's death spiral.

The method dramatically reduces the amount of virus material required and allows scientists to get results several times faster.

When scientists at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory focused the full intensity of the world’s most powerful X-ray l