Molecular movies

A new machine learning algorithm rapidly reconstructs 3D images from X-ray data. 

His visit highlighted the breadth of our world-class research and the people and collaborations that make it possible. A key theme of the day: how SLAC and the National Labs are advancing AI to accelerate discovery.

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.

Ultrafast electrons at SLAC’s LCLS facility resolved the structural changes in a light-activated molecule to determine which simulations work best. 

Researchers across the lab are developing AI tools to harness data and particle beams in real time and make molecular movies, speeding up the discovery process in the era of big data.

A study reveals an ultrathin material’s ability to circularly polarize light, potentially informing how they work in optoelectronic devices.

Improvements to the lab’s “electron camera” use AI and “time stamping” to help reveal nature’s speedy processes more accurately. 

With up to a million X-ray flashes per second, 8,000 times more than its predecessor, it transforms the ability of scientists to explore atomic-scale, ultrafast phenomena that are key to a broad range of applications, from quantum materials to clean...

After decades of effort, scientists have finally seen the process by which nature creates the oxygen we breathe using SLAC’s X-ray laser.

No human cell can function without these tiny machines, which cause disease when they go haywire and offer potential targets for therapeutic drugs.

Hitting molecules with two photons of light at once set off unexpected processes that were captured in detail with SLAC’s X-ray laser. Scientists say this new approach should work for bigger and more complicated molecules, too, allowing new insights into...

Molecular movie-making is both an art and a science; the results let us watch how nature works on the smallest scales.