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Scientists at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University have shown that copper-based superconductors, or cuprates – the first class of materials found to carry electricity with no loss at relatively high temperatures – contain fluctuating stripes of electron charge and spin that meander like rivulets over rough ground.

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In experiments with the lab’s ultrafast ‘electron camera,’ laser light hitting a material is almost completely converted into nuclear vibrations, which are key to switching a material’s properties on and off for future electronics and other applications.

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Studies at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have made the first real-time observations of how silica – an abundant material in the Earth’s crust – easily transforms into a dense glass when hit with a massive shock wave like one generated from a meteor impact.

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Helen Quinn, a professor emerita at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University, will receive the 2018 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Physics – one of eight prestigious Franklin Institute Awards that will be handed out in Philadelphia next April.

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When hit by a powerful shock wave, materials can change their shape – a property known as plasticity – yet keep their lattice-like atomic structure. Now scientists have used the X-ray laser at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory to see, for the first time, how a material’s atomic structure deforms when shocked by pressures nearly as extreme as the ones at the center of the Earth.

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Former SLAC Director and Stanford University Professor Emeritus Jonathan Dorfan has been awarded Japan’s Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Star for his contributions as founding president of the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST). It is the highest award Japan bestows on university presidents.

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Menlo Park, Calif. — Scientists from Stanford University and the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have captured the first atomic-level images of finger-like growths called dendrites that can pierce the barrier between battery compartments and trigger short circuits or fires. Dendrites and the problems they cause have been a stumbling block on the road to developing new types of batteries that store more energy so electric cars, cell phones, laptops and other devices can go longer between charges.

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Alexander Chao, a professor emeritus of particle physics and astrophysics at Stanford University and the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, has been recognized with the 2018 Robert R. Wilson Prize for Achievement in the Physics of Particle Accelerators. Awarded by the American Physical Society (APS), the prize honors Chao’s contributions to our understanding of how to build, operate and improve complex, accelerator-based discovery devices; his service to the research community; and his engagement in the education of engineers and scientists in the field.

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Attempting to model and measure the distribution of 300 million galaxies is not a job for the faint of heart. That’s exactly the challenge that has been undertaken by Risa Wechsler, associate professor of physics and astrophysics at SLAC and Stanford, who was recently named fellow of the American Physical Society. Wechsler was elected for her pioneering work in understanding galaxy formation and for her leadership in large survey projects.

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This year’s SSRL/LCLS Annual Users' Meeting brought together nearly 400 researchers who conduct experiments at Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource (SSRL) and the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS), including 90 participants in the concurrent High-Power Laser workshop.The meeting was held at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory Sept. 27-29.

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A staff member at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Acceleratory Laboratory, Matthew Latimer is in charge of seven spectroscopy beamlines at SSRL. He was recently selected for the 2017 Farrel W. Lytle Award, established by the SSRL Users’ Organization Executive Committee. The award promotes accomplishments in synchrotron science and supports collaboration among visiting scientists and staff who conduct research at SSRL.

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Ever since the discovery of X-rays in 1895, their ability to reveal things hidden to the human eye has created endless opportunities. But X-rays by far aren’t the only option to see the world with different eyes. Researchers hope to make better use of a different form of light, called terahertz radiation, which has broad applications in science, radar, security, medicine and communications.

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Scientists from the Stanford PULSE Institute at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have found a potential new way to make attosecond laser pulses using ordinary glass - in this case, the cover slip from a microscope slide.

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Kasper Kjaer is the winner of the inaugural LCLS Young Investigator Award given by the Users Executive Committee of the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS). The prize recognizes scientists in the early stages of their career for exceptional research performed with the LCLS X-ray free-electron laser at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.

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Using X-ray techniques, scientists are developing an analysis tool that can more accurately predict how sulfur compounds in a batch of crude oil might corrode equipment– an important safety issue for the oil industry.

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Internships at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have a way of opening surprising doors to the future.

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In a recent experiment conducted at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, a research team used bright, ultrafast X-ray pulses from SLAC’s X-ray free-electron laser to create a high-speed movie of a fluorescent protein in action. With that information, the scientists began to design a marker that switches more easily, a quality that can improve resolution during biological imaging.

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A project led by the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory will combine artificial intelligence with massive amounts of data and industry experience from a dozen U.S. partners to identify places where the electric grid is vulnerable to disruption, reinforce those spots in advance and recover faster when failures do occur.

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Suhas Kumar, a postdoctoral researcher at Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), wants to develop next-generation information storage devices and better computers. His particular interest is a new type of electronic device, called a memristor, that could make future computer memories faster, more durable and more energy efficient than today’s flash memory.

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When the moon threw its shadow on the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory during the Aug. 21 partial solar eclipse, it created the perfect backdrop for the 45th annual SLAC Summer Institute (SSI). This year, the program was all about the fascinating universe. The two-week summer institute attracted an international crowd of 123 participants, mostly graduate students and postdoctoral researchers, who discussed “cosmic opportunities” in particle physics and astrophysics research with world-renowned experts in the field.

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Researchers from the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University have for the first time shown that neural networks – a form of artificial intelligence – can accurately analyze the complex distortions in spacetime known as gravitational lenses 10 million times faster than traditional methods.

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A new way of operating the powerful X-ray laser at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory has enabled researchers to detect and measure fluctuations in magnetic structures being considered for new data storage and computing technologies.

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The American Physical Society has recognized Blair Ratcliff, an emeritus physicist at SLAC and Stanford University, with the 2017 Division of Particles and Fields Instrumentation Award “for the development of novel detectors exploiting Cherenkov radiation” – an advance that greatly enhanced BABAR’s capabilities and influenced the design of other experiments.

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In an experiment designed to mimic the conditions deep inside the icy giant planets of our solar system, scientists were able to observe “diamond rain” for the first time as it formed in high-pressure conditions. Extremely high pressure squeezes hydrogen and carbon found in the interior of these planets to form solid diamonds that sink slowly down further into the interior.

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Kathryn Hastie, staff scientist at The Scripps Research Institute, has spent the last decade studying how the deadly Lassa virus – which causes up to half a million cases of Lassa fever each year in West Africa – enters human cells via a cell surface receptor.

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A research team has created for the first time a movie with nanoscale resolution of the three-dimensional changes a virus undergoes as it prepares to infect a healthy cell. The scientists analyzed thousands of individual snapshots from intense X-ray flashes, capturing the process in an experiment at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.

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Scientists at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory recently upgraded a powerful optical laser system used to create shockwaves that generate high-pressure conditions like those found within planetary interiors. The laser system now delivers three times more energy for experiments with SLAC’s ultrabright X-ray laser, providing a more powerful tool for probing extreme states of matter in our universe.

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SLAC is helping to build and test one of the biggest and most sensitive detectors ever designed to catch a WIMP – the LUX-ZEPLIN or LZ detector.

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Three scientists at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory will receive DOE Early Career Research Program grants for research to find evidence of cosmic inflation, understand how plasmas excite particles to high energies and develop a way to accelerate particles in much shorter distances with terahertz radiation.

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Franklin Fuller and Cornelius Gati have been awarded 2017 Panofsky Fellowships by the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, where they will work over the next five years to get significantly more information about how catalysts work and develop new and improved biological imaging methods.

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Astrophysicists have a fairly accurate understanding of how the universe ages: That’s the conclusion of new results from the Dark Energy Survey (DES), a large international science collaboration, including researchers from the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, that put models of cosmic structure formation and evolution to the most precise test yet.

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Some of the world’s tiniest crystals are known as “artificial atoms” because they can organize themselves into structures that look like molecules, including “superlattices” that are potential building blocks for novel materials. Now scientists from the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University have made the first observation of these nanocrystals rapidly forming superlattices while they are themselves still growing.

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Experiments with a powerful “electron camera” at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have discovered that light whirls atoms around in perovskites, potentially explaining the high efficiency of these next-generation solar cell materials and providing clues for making better ones.

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A new era in international particle physics research officially began July 21 with a unique groundbreaking held a mile underground at the Sanford Underground Research Facility in South Dakota. Dignitaries, scientists and engineers from around the world marked the start of construction of a massive international experiment that could change our understanding of the universe. The Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility (LBNF) will house the international Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE), which will be built and operated by roughly 1,000 scientists and engineers from 30 countries.

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In a milestone for studying a class of chemical reactions relevant to novel solar cells and memory storage devices, an international team of researchers working at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory used an X-ray laser to watch “molecular breathing” – waves of subtle in-and-out motions of atoms – in real time and unprecedented detail.

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Scientists at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University have made the first direct measurements, and by far the most precise ones, of how electrons move in sync with atomic vibrations rippling through an exotic material, as if they were dancing to the same beat.

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The central hub for powerful electron beams at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory is getting a makeover to prepare for the installation of LCLS-II – a major upgrade to the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS), the world’s first hard X-ray free-electron laser. LCLS-II will deliver the most powerful X-rays ever made in a lab, with beams that are 10,000 times brighter than before, opening up unprecedented research opportunities in chemistry, materials science, biology and energy research.

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Pioneering nanoscientist Yi Cui, professor of materials science and engineering at Stanford University and of photon science at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, has been named a 2017 Blavatnik National Laureate. The $250,000 award recognizes the most promising researchers age 42 and younger at top U.S. academic and research institutions.

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

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In experiments at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, scientists were able to see the first step of a process that protects a DNA building block called thymine from sun damage: When it’s hit with ultraviolet light, a single electron jumps into a slightly higher orbit around the nucleus of a single oxygen atom.

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An international team of scientists has for the first time used an X-ray free-electron laser to unravel the structure of an intact virus particle on the atomic level. The method dramatically reduces the amount of virus material required, while also allowing the investigations to be carried out several times faster than before. This opens up entirely new research opportunities.

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An international team led by scientists from the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University has detected new features in the electronic behavior of a copper oxide material that may help explain why it becomes a perfect electrical conductor – a superconductor – at relatively high temperatures.

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In this Q&A, particle physicist Vera Lüth discusses scientific results that potentially hint at physics beyond the Standard Model. The professor emerita of experimental particle physics at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory is co-author of a review article published today in Nature that summarizes the findings of three experiments: BABAR at SLAC, Belle in Japan and LHCb at CERN.

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A team of scientists from The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) has solved the structure of the viral machinery that Lassa virus uses to enter human cells. X-ray beams from the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource (SSRL) at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory gave the team the final piece in a puzzle they sought to solve for over 10 years.

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When scientists at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory focused the full intensity of the world’s most powerful X-ray laser on a small molecule, they got a surprise: A single laser pulse stripped all but a few electrons out of the molecule’s biggest atom from the inside out, leaving a void that started pulling in electrons from the rest of the molecule, like a black hole gobbling a spiraling disk of matter.

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On April 12, one of the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope's instruments – the Large Area Telescope (LAT), which was conceived of and assembled at SLAC – detected its billionth extraterrestrial gamma ray.

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Water-splitting systems require a very efficient catalyst to speed up the chemical reaction that splits water into hydrogen and oxygen, while preventing the gases from recombining back into water. Now an international research team, including scientists at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, has developed a new catalyst with a molybdenum coating that prevents this problematic back reaction and works well in realistic operating conditions.

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A mysterious gamma-ray glow at the center of the Milky Way is most likely caused by pulsars. The findings cast doubt on previous interpretations of the signal as a potential sign of dark matter.

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Big leaps in technology require big leaps in design ­– entirely new approaches that can take full advantage of everything the technology has to offer. That’s the thinking behind a new initiative at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.

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A catalytic reaction may follow thousands of possible paths, and it can take years to identify which one it actually takes so scientists can tweak it and make it more efficient. Now researchers at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University have taken a big step toward cutting through this thicket of possibilities.