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Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) RSS feed

The Linac Coherent Light Source at SLAC, the world’s first hard X-ray free-electron laser, takes X-ray snapshots of atoms and molecules at work, revealing fundamental processes in materials, technology and living things.

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Rooftop view of Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS)

News Feature

Photon science, a spin-off of particle physics, has returned to its roots for help developing better, faster detectors.

News Feature

SLAC-invented Etching Process Builds Custom Nanostructures for X-ray Optics

Image - This colorized scanning electron microscope image shows a top-down view of a spiral zone plate, an X-ray optical device, created using a chemical etching technique developed at SLAC. (Chieh Chang, Anne Sakdinawat)
News Feature

SLAC Experiment Provides New Insight About How Electrons Move Across Molecules

Researchers used SLAC's LCLS X-ray laser to stimulate and measure the electron-transfer process inside a severed methyl iodide molecule.
News Feature

Grad Students and Postdocs Get a Crash Course in Using X-ray Lasers

Archana Raja, a graduate student at Columbia University, explains her group’s poster presentation at SLAC’s Ultrafast X-ray Summer Seminar.
News Feature

Exploding Soccer Ball-shaped Molecules Will Help Biological Studies

Image - Buckyballs, molecules composed of 60 carbon atoms, bust apart as they are struck by intense X-ray pulses at SLAC's Linac Coherent Light Source. (Greg Stewart/SLAC)
Press Release

SLAC Research Reveals Rapid DNA Changes that Act as Molecular Sunscreen

Illustration showing a thymine molecule, DNA helix and the sun.
Illustration

X-ray laser pulses probe water droplets like these to discover water’s hidden (and sometimes bizarre) properties. 

X-ray laser pulses probe water droplets like these to discover water’s hidden (and sometimes bizarre) properties.
Press Release

Scientists at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have made the first structural observations of liquid water at temperatures down to minus...

Artist's concept - see caption
News Feature

A sense of adventure and intellectual rigor led PULSE chemistry professor Kelly Gaffney to a successful career in science.

Image - PULSE chemistry professor Kelly Gaffney. (Brad Plummer/SLAC)
News Feature

Even in their infancy, X-ray lasers such as SLAC's Linac Coherent Light Source are notching a list of important discoveries, and a special issue...

Image - This illustration represents data derived from 175,000 X-ray diffraction patterns of Trapanosoma brucei cathepsin B, a protein relevant to African sleeping sickness, measured with X-ray pulses at SLAC's Linac Coherent Light Source. (CFEL)
News Feature

SLAC scientists have found a new way to produce bright pulses of light from accelerated electrons that could shrink "light source" technology used around...

A PhD student inspects the microwave undulator.
News Feature

SLAC-led researchers have made the first direct measurements of a small, extremely rapid atomic rearrangement that dramatically changes the properties of many important materials.

The transformation of cadmium sulfide nanocrystals