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X-ray studies at SLAC facilities help scientists understand the fundamental workings of nature by probing matter in atomic detail.

atoms forming a tentative bond
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A study with SLAC's X-ray laser is a key step toward producing movies that show how a single molecule changes during a chemical reaction

Image - Scientists at SLAC's Linac Coherent Light Source used an optical laser to orient molecules along a common axis, like a compass needle to a magnet, and then used X-ray laser pulses to explore structural details. (koocbor/Flickr: http://www.flickr.c
News Release

New Technology Allows Faster, More Accurate Imaging of Hard-to-study Membrane Proteins

Illustration - man with migraine, serotonin receptor bound to anti-migraine drug
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An international team led by scientists from two SLAC/Stanford institutes has devised a much faster and more accurate way of measuring subtle atomic vibrations...

Image showing laser beam energizing atoms in crystal lattic
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Researchers have found a new way to probe molecules and atoms with an X-ray laser, setting off cascading bursts of light that reveal precise...

Image - An X-ray pulse at SLAC's Linac Coherent Light Source strikes a neon atom, causing electrons to reshuffle and then re-emit light at a slightly different X-ray wavelength, and also stimulating a chain reaction of amplified light in neighboring atoms
News Release

A study shows for the first time that X-ray lasers can be used to generate a complete 3-D model of a protein without any...

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Scientists in SLAC's Integrated Circuits Department reach a new frontier in ultrafast X-ray science with intricately designed signal-processing chips that translate particles of light...

Four ePix100 prototype chips bonded in a test setup. (Brad Plummer/SLAC)
News Release

Scientists used the powerful X-ray laser at the U.S. Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory to create movies detailing trillionths-of-a-second changes in the...

thin samples of copper, iron and titanium
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Sean Brennan's decades of X-ray expertise keep pulling him back to SLAC even though he formally retired in 2008. During a recent visit to...

Photo - Sean Brennan is pictured here in 1997, his 20...
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Working with a metal oxide that shows promise for future generations of electronic devices, IBM and SLAC scientists have shown they can precisely control...

Image - Straining vanadium dioxide causes the vanadiu...
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In a detailed study of how intense light strips electrons from atoms, researchers used an X-ray laser, SLAC's Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS), to...

Image - Neon atom illustration, showing electrons on ...
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Dao Xiang, a SLAC accelerator physicist, has received an international award for his work on a technique for tuning an electron beam with a...

Dao Xiang. (Matt Beardsley/SLAC)
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A special issue of a physics publication highlights the contributions of SLAC's X-ray laser and the few similar lasers around the globe in probing...

Cover art for "Frontiers of free-electron laser scien...