SLAC topics

Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) RSS feed

The Linac Coherent Light Source at SLAC, the world’s first hard X-ray free-electron laser, takes X-ray snapshots of atoms and molecules at work, revealing fundamental processes in materials, technology and living things.

Visit LCLS website

Rooftop view of Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS)

News Feature

Tais Gorkhover, Michael Kagan, Kazuhiro Terao and Joshua Turner will each receive $2.5 million for research that studies fundamental particles, nanoscale objects, quantum materials...

Photos of SLAC's 2018 Early Career Award winners
News Feature

The X-ray laser movie shows what happens when light hits retinal, a key part of vision in animals and photosynthesis in microbes. The action...

An image of San Francisco Bay salt ponds from space
News Feature

The researchers observed how an enzyme from drug-resistant tuberculosis bacteria damages an antibiotic molecule. The new technique provides a powerful tool to examine changes...

Photo - CXI instrument at LCLS
News Feature

Water is more complicated than it seems. Now a study led by researchers at Stockholm University has probed the movements of its molecules on...

Illustration showing blurring of images of water molecules made with X-ray laser
News Feature

Experiments at SLAC heated water from room temperature to 100,000 degrees Celsius in less than a millionth of a millionth of a second, producing...

Illustration of water molecules hit by X-ray laser
News Feature

By placing the tiniest strands of proteins on one-atom-thick graphene, scientists capture promising X-ray laser images of these elusive biomolecules that play a key...

Illustration of amyloid fibrils on graphene
News Feature

The liquid sheets – less than 100 water molecules thick – will let researchers probe chemical, physical and biological processes, and even the nature...

A glass chip used as a nozzle to create thin sheets of flowing liquid.
News Feature

The new technology could allow next-generation instruments to explore the atomic world in ever more detail.

Beam from SRF gun
News Feature

When it comes to making molecular movies, producing the world’s fastest X-ray pulses is only half the battle. A new technique reveals details about...

Illustration of the LCSL "attoclock"
News Feature

The DOE’s top official met with SLAC staff and toured the Linac Coherent Light Source X-ray laser, where a superconducting upgrade is underway.

Secretary of Energy Rick Perry at SLAC's LCLS undulator hall
News Feature

Using SLAC’s X-ray laser, researchers have made detailed 3-D images of nanoscale biology, with future applications in the study of air pollution, combustion and...

Colorful image formed from multiple X-ray diffraction patterns.
News Feature

The new technique will allow researchers to observe ultrafast chemical processes previously undetectable at the atomic scale.

Yuantao Ding and Marc Guetg in the SLAC Control Room