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parties informed about developments at the Advanced Light Source,
a national user facility located at Lawrence Berkeley National
Laboratory, University of California. To be placed on the mailing
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1. STANDING WAVES PROBE NANOWEDGE INTERFACES
Structures with nanometer-scale dimensions are ever more important in science and technology. Integrated circuits are the most familiar example, but nanostructures of a different type are also commercialized in magnetic read heads for high-density data storage and may soon appear in magnetic memory chips. With the increased importance in such nanostructures of atoms residing at buried solid - solid interfaces, characterizing buried interfaces becomes a crucial step in understanding mechanisms and developing new devices based on these state-of-the-art materials. For example, new methods to nondestructively study buried interfaces would help to clarify the nature of both the giant magnetoresistance effect and exchange biasing, two key phenomena that make magnetic nanostructures useful. To address this problem, a group led by researchers from Berkeley Lab and the University of California, Davis, has now combined the technique of generating standing waves of circularly polarized soft x rays at ALS Beamline 4.0.2 with the growth of wedge-shaped samples. In particular, the researchers demonstrated the ability to map both composition and magnetization across an iron - chromium interface by means of core-level photoelectron spectroscopy, magnetic circular dichroism, and parallel mathematical modeling.
Read the full story at http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/science/sci_archive/55wave_probe.html.
Publication about this research: S.-H. Yang et al., "Probing buried interfaces with soft x-ray standing wave spectroscopy: application to the Fe/Cr interface," J. Phys.: Condens. Matter 14, L407 (2002).
2. PANEL ALLOCATES BEAMTIME, SEEKS NEW MEMBERS
The ALS Proposal Study Panel (PSP) met on Friday, July 12, to discuss and rank some 70 new independent investigator proposals for general sciences research on ALS beamlines. Including the proposals that were rolled over from the last cycle, there was a total of about 160 proposals requesting beamtime during the upcoming running period from December 2002 through May 2003. This does not include the protein crystallography proposals, which are dealt with separately. Proposal submitters will be notified individually of the PSP results, and the distribution of scores will be posted at http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/quickguide/pspscores.html as soon as it becomes available.
Two members of the PSP will rotate off for the next cycle: Gwyn Williams (Jefferson Laboratory) and Steve Southworth (Argonne National Laboratory). The ALS thanks Gwyn and Steve for the outstanding contribution they have made to the ALS scientific program. The remaining panel members are Tomas Baer (University of North Carolina), Adam Hitchcock (McMaster University), Chair Yves Idzerda (Montana State University), Theodore Madey (Rutgers University), Dale Sayers (North Carolina State University), and Kevin Smith (Boston University).
The ALS is now accepting nominations to replace the two leaving panel members. To best cover the range of science at the ALS, the nominees should be expert in atomic, molecular, and optical physics and/or infrared physics. Please send your nominations directly to Neville Smith (NVSmith@lbl.gov).
3. COMMITTEE FORMED TO ENHANCE DIVERSITY AT ALS
The ALS Diversity Committee held its first meeting on Tuesday, July 9. Members include ALS staff members Elke Arenholz, Liz Moxon, Neville Smith, Zahid Hussain, Ernie Glover, and Chair Gary Krebs. ALS Division Director Daniel Chemla started the meeting off with a few words about the importance of developing a long-term strategy for diversity in the division. Harry Reed of Berkeley Lab's Workforce Diversity Office and Kamala Green of the Human Resources Division helped lead a discussion about the importance of recruitment, retention, and education for improving diversity in the division as well as in Berkeley Lab.
The meeting was lively, and many exciting possibilities for enhancing diversity were discussed. The committee eventually hopes to develop a few guidelines to offer the various hiring committees in the division. Toward this end, Harry, Kamala, and Gary agreed to examine a successful program in another division (for recruiting technicians with B.S. degrees) to determine how it might be instituted at the ALS. At the graduate-student level, the existing ALS fellowship program (http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/fellowships/index.html), coordinated by Zahid and Neville, will encourage applications from underrepresented groups. Neville also described a possible model for the ALS in a Bell Labs program that keeps talented underrepresented undergraduate students in the Ph.D. pipeline. Various other outreach programs were discussed, including the division's summer student program and a program at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory that sends speakers to colleges and universities with underrepresented groups. To see the division's current diversity plan, go to http://www.lbl.gov/Workplace/WFDAP/plans/ALS.html.
4. UEC CORNER: NOTES FROM THE USERS' EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
Planning for the Users' Meeting this fall is well underway. As in recent years, workshops will be a major part of the meeting, and tentative workshop topics proposed so far include polarized detectors and measurements, infrared spectroscopy, x-ray microdiffraction, high pressure science, and tomography.
The UEC would like to hear from any users interested in sponsoring a workhop at this year's ALS Users' Meeting. Contact Eli Rotenberg (ERotenberg@lbl.gov) or John Bozek (JDBozek@lbl.gov) as soon as possible with your suggestions.
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
Beamline 4.0.2
Beamlines 5.0.1, 5.0.2, 5.0.3
Beamline 7.0.1
Beamline 7.3.1.1
Beamline 7.3.3
Beamline 8.0.1
Beamline 8.2.1
Beamline 8.3.1
Beamline 9.0.1
Beamline 9.0.2
Beamline 10.0.1
Beamline 10.3.2
6. OPERATIONS UPDATE
For the user runs of June 25 - July 2 and July 5 - 8, the beam reliability (time delivered/time scheduled) was 96%. Of the scheduled beam, 79% was delivered to completion without interruption. There were no significant outages.
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-863
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.
Previous Issues are available.
ALSNews Vol. 203 July 17, 2002
Table of Contents
1. Standing Waves Probe Nanowedge Interfaces
2. Panel Allocates Beamtime, Seeks New Members
3. Committee Formed to Enhance Diversity at ALS
4. UEC Corner: Notes from the Users' Executive Committee
5. Who's in Town: A Sampling of ALS Users
6. Operations Update
by Art Robinson
(Contact: CSFadley@lbl.gov)
(Contact: NVSmith@lbl.gov)
(Contact: GFKrebs@lbl.gov)
by Roger Falcone
(Contact: rwf@physics.berkeley.edu)
Felicia Betancourt (Berkeley Lab)
T.J. Wilkinson, Mario Ortega (Berkeley Lab)
Neli Tsibakhashvili (Georgian Academy of Sciences, Republic of Georgia)
Karl Nieman (Utah State Univ.)
Ted Raab (Carnegie Institute of Washington)
Hoi-Ying Holman (Berkeley Lab)
Stephen Cramer (Univ. of California, Davis)
Joachim Stohr (Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory)
Louis Lim, Nicole Guinn, Alice Vrielink (Univ. of California, Santa Cruz)
Marc Jacobs (Vertex Pharmaceuticals)
Daniel Knighton, Hans Parge, Samantha Greasley (Pfizer)
Geoffrey Chang, Christopher Roth (The Scripps Research Institute)
Gyorgy Snell (Syrrx, Inc.)
Dan Dessau (Univ. of Colorado at Boulder)
Jim Tobin (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory)
Harald Ade (North Carolina State Univ.)
Brian Tonner (Univ. of Central Florida)
Stephen Urquhart (Univ. of Saskatchewan, Canada)
Shirley Chiang (Univ. of California, Davis)
Adam Hitchcock (McMaster Univ., Canada)
Alain Manceau (Berkeley Lab)
Tatiana Kirpichtchikova (Univ. Joseph Fourier, France)
David Sherman (Univ. of Bristol, UK)
John Tesmer, Jeff Almrud, David Lodowski, Romana Kristelly (Univ. of Texas at Austin)
Greg Bowman (Univ. of California, Berkeley)
Paulene Quigley, Claire O'Neal, Doug Davies (Univ. of Washington)
Ernst Bergmann, Karla Krewulak, Kirsty Dunlop, Bart Hazes (Univ. of Alberta, Canada)
Scott Classen, Joseph Mougous (Univ. of California, Berkeley)
Chris Bonagura, Weiru Wang, Heike Krupka, Abinav Kumas (Plexxicon, Inc.)
Seth Harris (Univ. of California, San Francisco)
Julian Chen (Univ. of California, San Francisco)
Larry Sorenson (Univ. of Washington)
Laurie Butler (University of Chicago)
Nora Berrah (Western Michigan Univ.)
Dan Dessau (Univ. of Colorado at Boulder)
Dale Sayers (North Carolina State Univ.)
(Contact: Lampo@lbl.gov)
ALSNews is a biweekly electronic newsletter to keep users informed about
developments at the Advanced Light Source, a national user facility located at
Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, University of
California. To be placed on the mailing list, send your email address to
ALSNews@lbl.gov. We welcome suggestions for topics and content. Submissions
are due the Friday before the issue date.
Editors: lstamura@lbl.gov, alrobinson@lbl.gov, amgreiner@lbl.gov
Last updated July 17, 2002
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