In her Symposium X talk on Monday, Margaret Murnane of the University of Colorado Boulder described methods to create coherent sources with extremely short wavelengths, with excellent spectral, temporal, and polarization control. “Thirty years ago,” she said, “we never thought that we could achieve the same kind of control—and perhaps better control—over light in extreme UV and soft x-ray region as we could in the visible region of the spectrum.”
From life-saving advances in medicine to life-changing opportunities in renewable energy, imaging technology offers a window into worlds that can’t otherwise be seen by the human eye. That makes it an essential tool across a broad range of scientific disciplines, from engineering to biosciences. But despite their widespread use, today’s imaging techniques remain limited. Finding a solution to this problem will require collaborating with other institutions and developing new ways to educate up and-coming scientists. Based at CU Boulder, the Science and Technology Center on Real-Time Functional Imaging—known as STROBE—is designed to do exactly that.
In a new study, appearing in the November 2017 issue of Nature Materials, a research team led by UC Berkeley Associate Professor of Chemistry and Physics, Naomi S. Ginsberg, has announced the development and implementation of the most direct method to-date to track the nanoscale process of energy flow that punctuates the initial picoseconds after light absorption in some natural and artificial light harvesting systems. The research results are also available online at the Nature Materials website.
Ever since the invention of the laser more than 50 years ago, scientists have been striving to create an X-ray version. But until recently, very high power levels were needed to make an X-ray laser. Making a practical, tabletop-scale X-ray laser source required taking a new approach, as will be described by physicist Margaret Murnane in this fall’s Hans Bethe Lecture.
The Science and Technology Center on Real-Time Functional Imaging, known as STROBE, will be headquartered at CU Boulder and integrate several areas of imaging science and technology, including photon and electron-based imaging, advanced algorithms, big data analysis and adaptive imaging.
The physical lens had been the standard for use in the detailed study of microscopic organisms since Hooke’s seminal work Micrographia was published in 1665. Dr. Jianwei Miao, a professor of Physics and Astronomy and the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA, blew that standard out of the water with a method known as Coherent Diffractive Imaging (CDI).
Plenary wrap up with Dr. Laura Waller, University of California Berkeley. Computational Microscopy for High-Throughput Science
The locations of atoms in a metallic alloy nanoparticle have been determined using a combination of electron microscopy and image simulation, revealing links between the particle’s structure and magnetic properties.
Researchers measured the coordinates of more than 23,000 atoms in a technologically important material
Berkeley Lab researchers help to map iron-platinum particle in unprecedented detail.