Compact Femtosecond X-Ray Source

Speaker: Dr. Samuel Teitelbaum

Program DescriptionAbstract
X-ray Free Electron Lasers (XFELs) have revolutionized scientific fields from structural biology to earth sciences with bright, femtosecond x-ray pulses that can access atomic length and time scales. However, their high cost per beamline has created a bottleneck for rapid progress in the field. I will discuss our efforts to broaden the scientific community’s access to ultrafast x-ray sources by building compact, lower-cost ultrafast x-ray sources.  I will discuss the design and early commissioning results of two sources based on inverse Compton scattering, the compact x-ray source (CXLS) and the compact XFEL (CXFEL). Both sources have physical footprints and capital cost orders of magnitude smaller than a typical XFEL. Finally, I will give an outlook on these compact sources’ applications in condensed matter physics, AMO physics, and structural biology and their potential role in the ecosystem of x-ray light sources.