1. SUPERBENDS AT THE ALS: A PERFECT FIT
by Lori Tamura

One by one, the pieces fell into place. Slowly but surely, the story lines converged. The development of superconducting bend magnets ("superbends"), intended to expand the capabilities of the ALS in general, dovetailed neatly with the extraordinary growth of protein crystallography research in recent years. The superbends will allow up to 12 new beamlines of intermediate energy (from 7 to 40 keV) without sacrificing the quality or quantity of light available at the lower energies. This will be more than enough to accommodate the fast-growing protein crystallography community and to provide complementary diffraction, spectroscopy, and imaging capability for materials science in the higher energy range. Superbends, in other words, are tailor-made for the future of the ALS. When the superbend-enhanced ALS starts up for user operations this week, it will mark the beginning of a new era in its history. It will be a testament to the vision, ingenuity, and dedication of the multitude of people who contributed over the course of many years to this resounding success story.

Read the full story at http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/science/sci_archive/superbend.html.

2. NONLINEAR X-RAY SPECTROSCOPY: EXPERIMENTS FOR THE FUTURE

Shaul Mukamel, the C.E. Kenneth Mees Professor of Chemistry at the University of Rochester and a 1997 Humboldt Award recipient, presented a colloquium at the ALS on August 30, 2001, titled "Ultrafast Nonlinear X-Ray Spectroscopy of Molecules: Theoretical Challenges." Professor Mukamel has developed novel ways to observe and interpret molecular dynamics using fast (optical) laser pulses. His book, "Principles of Nonlinear Optical Spectroscopy," is widely used as that field's standard text. The formalism described therein can be used to explain the dynamics of various systems, including molecules, molecular crystals, semiconductors, and strongly correlated materials. In the colloquium, he outlined recent efforts to generalize these nonlinear optical spectroscopy methods to include the x-ray regime and described several relevant x-ray spectroscopy experiments that could be performed in the future, perhaps at a facility such as the ALS.

Professor Mukamel pointed out that nonlinear x-ray spectroscopy experiments can reveal all the electronic states, while simultaneously providing control over which atoms are excited. This allows us to obtain wave-function information that cannot be obtained by using optical spectroscopy alone. He cited several examples of optical pump/x-ray probe experiments that might be carried out on molecules of interest, such as nitroanilene isomers, molecular dendrimers, one-dimensional chains of mixed-valence compounds, and porphyrin assemblies. When asked what kind of x-ray source would provide the maximum information, Mukamel replied that a 10-fs x-ray source would be needed for performing resonant, nonlinear, purely x-ray time-domain experiments, but admitted that this may not be available for a while. Until then, he said, there is still a lot to be done, even with current technology. He concluded by saying that there is a lot of interesting physics to be done in the 100- to 200-fs range by combining optical and x-ray pulses, and that it will be a very nice challenge for theorists and experimentalists to work together to interpret these experiments.

3. ALS USERS' MEETING UPDATE: DEADLINES EXTENDED
(Contact: alsum2001@lbl.gov)

The early-registration deadline for the ALS Users' Meeting has been extended to Monday, October 8. Register now online at http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/usermtg/registration.html to receive the reduced fee rate of $150.00 (regular) and $60.00 (student). After October 8, the regular and student fees increase to $175.00 and $75.00, respectively.

Nominations for the Halbach Award for Innovative Instrumentation, the David A. Shirley Award for Scientific Achievement, and the Tim Renner User Services Award will continue to be accepted until Monday, October 8. Award nominations can be submitted over the Web at http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/usermtg/awards/nominations.html. The awards will be presented during the ALS Users' Meeting dinner on the evening of Tuesday, October 16.

In other meeting news, an up-to-date meeting program, workshop agendas, and a listing of the exhibitors of synchrotron-related equipment attending this year's meeting have been posted on the Users' Meeting Web site (http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/usermtg). Finally, it is still not too late to submit an abstract for the poster session on Tuesday, October 16. Abstracts can be submitted over the Web at http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/usermtg/abstracts.html. The poster session will take place concurrently with the student poster competition, vendor exhibits, and a reception/dinner on the ALS patio on Tuesday from 3:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.

4. ALS WELL REPRESENTED IN UPCOMING SRMS-3 CONFERENCE
(Contact: HAPadmore@lbl.gov)

The Third International Conference on Synchrotron Radiation in Materials Science (SRMS-3) will be held in Singapore on January 21-24, 2002. The SRMS conference series comprehensively covers the intersection between materials science and engineering on one hand, and synchrotron radiation, facilities, and instrumentation on the other. SRMS-3 is being sponsored by the Singapore Synchrotron Light Source (SSLS) and the National University of Singapore. Howard Padmore of the ALS is on the International Advisory Committee, and several of the invited speakers are associated with the ALS. Nobumichi Tamura (ALS) will give a talk about using microdiffraction to study stress distributions in thin films on a microscale. Hendrik Ohldag (Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory) will discuss ferromagnetic/antiferromagnetic coupling of thin films studied with XPEEM. Jeffrey Kortright (Berkeley Lab, Materials Sciences Division) will address soft x-ray scattering applied to magnetic materials. Gerd Schneider (Berkeley Lab, Center for X-Ray Optics) will talk about electromigration in copper interconnects. The deadline for abstract submission is October 15, 2001. For more information, visit the conference Web site at http://ssls.nus.edu.sg/srms.html.

5. WHO'S IN TOWN: A SAMPLING OF ALS USERS

Following are some of the experimenters who will be collecting data during the next two weeks at the ALS.

Beamline 1.4.3
T.J. Wilkinson (Berkeley Lab)
Harvey Doner (Univ. of California, Berkeley)
Tom Breunig and Dan Fried (Univ. of California, San Francisco)

Beamlines 5.0.1, 5.0.2, and 5.0.3
James Berger (Univ. of California, Berkeley)
Peter Hwang (Univ. of California, San Francisco)
Sung-Hou Kim et al. (Berkeley Structural Genomics Center, Berkeley Lab)
Partho Ghosh (Univ. of California, San Diego)
Kathryn Ely (The Burnham Institute)

Beamline 6.3.1
Yasuji Muramatsu (Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute)
Hisanobu Wakita (Fukuoka Univ., Japan)

Beamline 7.0.1
Z. Q. Qiu (Univ. of California, Berkeley)
Steve Kevan (Univ. of Oregon)
Elaine Seddon (Daresbury Laboratory, UK)
Jinghua Guo (Berkeley Lab)
Harald Ade (North Carolina State Univ.)
Jeffrey Kortright (Berkeley Lab)

Beamline 8.0.1
Satish Myneni (Princeton Univ.)
Richard Saykally (Univ. of California, Berkeley)

Beamline 9.3.2
Dario Arena (Brookhaven National Laboratory)
Glenn Waychunas (Berkeley Lab)

Beamline 10.0.1
Ron Phaneuf (Univ. of Nevada, Reno)

6. OPERATIONS UPDATE

The ALS is currently in a planned shutdown for installations and maintenance. User operations are scheduled to resume at 12:00 a.m. on Thursday, October 4, 2001.

Long-term and weekly operations schedules are available on the Web (http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/accelinfo.html). Requests for special operations use of the "scrubbing" shift should be sent to Bruce Samuelson (BCSamuelson@lbl.gov, x4738) by 1:00 p.m. Friday. The Accelerator Status Hotline at (510) 486-6766 (ext. 6766 from Lab phones) features a recorded message giving up-to-date information on the operational status of the accelerator.

LBNL/PUB-848
Editors: lstamura@lbl.gov, alrobinson@lbl.gov, amgreiner@lbl.gov, ejmoxon@lbl.gov

This work was supported by the Director, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC03-76SF00098.