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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

News Feature

Laser-timing Tool Works at the Speed of Electrons

Image - An illustration of the setup used to test an "attosecond" timing tool at SLAC's Linac Coherent Light Source X-ray laser. The dashed line represents the arrival time of the X-ray laser.
News Feature

DOE-funded Program Benefits Companies, the Lab and Society

A copper acceleration cavity with an extremely thin coating of tungsten.
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.
Press Release

Using high-brilliance X-rays, researchers track the process that fuel cells use to produce electricity, knowledge that will help make large-scale

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)