LCLS The First Experiments
The Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC) for the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) has selected six scientific experiments for the early phase of the project. The LCLS, with proposed construction in the 2003-2006 time frame, has been designed to utilize the last third of the existing Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) linac. The linac produces a high-current 5-15 GeV electron beam that is bunched into 230 fs slices with a 120 Hz repetition rate. When traveling through a sufficiently long (of order of 100 m) undulator, the electron bunches will lead to self amplification of the emitted x-ray intensity constituting an x-ray free electron laser (XFEL). If funded as proposed, the LCLS will be the first XFEL in the world, operating in the 800-8,000 eV energy range. The emitted coherent x-rays will have unprecedented brightness with 10{sup 12}-10{sup 13} photons/pulse in a 0.2-0.4% energy bandpass and an unprecedented time structure with a design pulse length of 230 fs. Studies are under way to reduce the pulse length to tens of femtoseconds. This document presents descriptions of the early scientific experiments selected by SAC in the spring of 2000. They cover a wide range of scientific fields. The experimental teams consist of many internationally recognized scientists who are excited about the unprecedented x-ray capabilities of LCLS that surely will lead to new scientific frontiers. More generally, this document serves to forward the scientific case for an accelerator-based XFEL source, as requested by the BESAC subpanel on Novel Coherent Light Sources, chaired by Stephen R. Leone. Two general classes of experiments are proposed for the LCLS. The first class consists of experiments where the x-ray beam is used to probe the sample without modifying it, as is done in most experiments at current synchrotron sources. In the second class, the LCLS beam is used to induce non-linear photo-processes or matter in extreme conditions. The same source can be used for both types of experiments by utilizing six-orders-of-magnitude changes in photon flux density by focusing the LCLS beam, and by exploiting the strong dependence of the photoabsorption cross section on photon energy and atomic number.
- Research Organization:
- SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (US)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC03-76SF00515
- OSTI ID:
- 812649
- Report Number(s):
- SLAC-R-611; TRN: US0303463
- Resource Relation:
- Other Information: PBD: 10 Feb 2003
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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