A million bursts per second, that’s what the world’s most powerful X-ray laser, the LCLS-IILinac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) update from Stanford.
The LCLS-II uses colder temperatures than deep space, since only in this way is it possible to accelerate electrons to almost the speed of light, achieving the million bursts mentioned.
We are talking about an X-ray free electron laser (XFEL – X-Ray Free-Electron Laser Facility), an instrument that captures images of microscopic objects in high resolution and on ultrafast time scales. Its predecessor was used for generate images of viruses, recreate the conditions at the center of a star, boil water in plasma states hotter than the Earth’s core, or create the loudest possible soundamong other applications.
This new version will have pulses 10,000 times brighter than its predecessor, which only achieved 120 pulses per second , so that data that previously took months to collect will now be collected in a few minutes. This will increase the capacity to develop technologies focused on solving current problems in society.
In the LCLS-II the electrons are generated and then accelerated through a huge pipe. They then come to a “wiggler” that wobbles them around until they shoot X-rays from side to side.
Before electrons were shot down a copper tube at room temperature, the LCLS-II uses 37 cryomodules to chill the equipment to -271°C, channeling liquid helium coolant. At that temperature, the niobium metal cavities inside the modules become superconducting, and electrons pass through without resistance. Soon after, the electrons pass into undulators, which use powerful magnets to pull the electrons from side to side, making them wobble and causing them to emit X-rays.
In this video you have the details:
LCLS-II is expected to start producing X-rays later this year, we’ll be keeping a close eye on that.
