Technological advances seem to have never hesitated exploring new arenas as well as merge separate technologies to boost scientific brilliances and improve machine-expertise.
This is revealed by yet another brilliant marriage of laser sources with X-rays’ penetrating power along with atomic sensitivity. And, the result is — the birth of the world’s first X-ray free electron laser, Linac Coherent Light Source undulator system.
Though, the undulator system will be operational not before 2009, it can well be foreseen that the system, surely will, open up new scientific frontiers, representing an immense technical achievement for the United States.
Being designed and constructed at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, the X-ray free electron laser will be a 130-meter undulator system that would provide a precise magnetic field through which an electron beam will travel.
This is how the new improved laser would work:
The undulators’ magnetic fields force the electrons to oscillate back and forth and produce large amounts of X-rays. These X-rays interact back on the electrons and force them to bunch at X-ray wavelengths. When this occurs, the electrons emit their light coherently, causing a large gain in radiation power that raises the X-rays’ intensity.
And the result ‘ Compared to the prevailing X-ray machines, the pulses of X-ray laser light from the Linac Coherent Light Source, will be shorter, but, a billion times brighter.
True, no other X-ray source presently available can produce such bright light and perhaps, would never be able to in the near future ‘ making it a fourth-generation light-source.
