“We have an enormously exciting pursue. It has discovery potential and science potential written all over it,” says Jonathan Dorfan, speaking of the x-ray free-electron laser (XFEL) to be built at SLAC, where he is director. The German Electron Synchrotron laboratory (DESY) in Hamburg and RIKEN’s Harima Institute in Japan have similar projects in the works.

They differ in detail, but the trio of upcoming large-scale XFELs will produce coherent, intense, ultrafast pulses of hard x rays. The pulses will be on the time and wavelength scales of molecular and atomic processes, and have 10 billion times higher peak brightness than synchrotron radiation sources. Keith Hodgson, SLAC synchrotron director, says moving from a synchrotron source to an XFEL—sometimes called a fourth-generation x-ray radiation source—is a much bigger step than was “going from x-ray tubes in one’s own lab to a synchrotron light source.” Adds John Galayda, project director for the...

You do not currently have access to this content.