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What can you study in femtoseconds? Materials

DOE/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

When Aaron Lindenberg was introduced to ultrafast science as a first-year grad student at UC Berkeley, he was immediately hooked. He knew he wanted to be part of a hot research field that explores nature's speediest processes and lets us see the world with different eyes.

What can you study in femtoseconds? High energy density physics

DOE/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

It might be difficult to imagine a job that spans understanding the cosmos, bringing fusion energy to Earth, and treating cancer, but that's exactly what Siegfried Glenzer does.

What can you study in femtoseconds? Biology & chemistry

DOE/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

It all started when a high school chemistry teacher encouraged Amy Cordones-Hahn to leapfrog her regular classroom assignments and do experiments in his lab.

Rare supernova discovery ushers in new era for cosmology

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

With from an automated supernova-hunting pipeline based at NERSC, astronomers have captured multiple images of a gravitationally lensed Type 1a supernova. This detection is currently the only one of its kind, but astronomers believe that if they can find more they may be able to measure the rate of the Universe's expansion within four percent accuracy. Fortunately, two Berkeley Lab researchers do have a method for identifying more of these events using existing wide-field surveys.

Journal: Science

How do you catch femtosecond light?

DOE/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

Gabriella Carini enjoys those little moments -- after hours and hours of testing in clean rooms, labs and at X-ray beamlines -- when she first sees an instrument work.

Study on impact of climate change on snowpack loss in Western US

DOE/Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Peer-Reviewed Publication

An international team of scientists, including one from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, has found that up to 20 percent loss in the annual maximum amount of water contained in the Western United States' mountain snowpack in the last three decades is due to human influences.

Journal: Nature Communications

How do you make a femtosecond light source?

DOE/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

Agostino 'Ago' Marinelli first met pioneering accelerator physicist Claudio Pellegrini as an undergraduate student at the University of Rome. It was 2007, a couple of years before the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) came online at SLAC, and people were abuzz about free-electron laser physics.

Why study in femtoseconds?

DOE/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

The text on this screen may appear stable enough, but every molecule, atom, and electron in it is in constant motion. The laws of quantum physics require that on the atomic scale nothing is ever truly at rest. Nano-sized motion also keeps us warm, cooks our food, lights our smartphones, and enables all of our senses of hearing, sight, smell, taste, and touch.

How X-rays pushed topological matter research over the top

DOE/Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Pioneering X-ray experiments at Berkeley Lab's Advanced Light Source (ALS) helped bring to life decades-old theories about exotic topological states of matter, and the ALS continues to play an important role in this flourishing field of research.

SLAC celebrates Femtosecond Week

DOE/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

Got a millionth of a billionth of a second? There's science that actually happens on this timescale. Join us online for a week of ultrafast science from April 17 to 21. Learn more about how scientists and engineers use electron beams and bright pulses of light from the Linac Coherent Light Source X-ray laser and other advanced lasers to capture some of nature's speediest processes that occur in just femtoseconds, or quadrillionths of a second.