Janos Kirz
appointed Acting
ALS Division Director
Highly regarded physicist and x-ray microscopist
Janos Kirz of Stony Brook University has been named by Berkeley
Lab Director Charles Shank to serve as Acting Director of
the ALS while Director Daniel Chemla continues on medical
leave. The announcement was made to ALS staff on May 6,
and the appointment will go into effect on June 1.
 Dr.
Kirz received both his B.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University
of California, Berkeley. From 1964–67, he also did graduate
work at Berkeley Lab in the Alvarez group using the 72-inch
bubble chamber at the Lab's old Bevatron facility. Most recently,
in 2003, Dr. Kirz spent a 10-month sabbatical here setting
up a soft x-ray diffraction imaging research program at Beamline
9.0.1 (see ALSNews
Vol. 216).
"We are very fortunate to have someone
of the reputation and accomplishment of Dr. Kirz step into
this important assignment," said Director Shank in his
announcement. Read the full text of the Director's
announcement.
Quasi-1D metal
shows unusual
spectral behavior
by Lori Tamura
One-dimensional (1D) systems can be approximated
by ultrathin wires or crystals with unidirectional bonds that
confine electron motion to one dimension. At low temperatures,
some 1D systems undergo a phase transition where interactions
between the lattice and the electrons create a charge-density
wave (CDW) in the material, which then exhibits highly nonlinear
electrical behavior. An ideal CDW conductor will show an energy
gap in its electronic energy bands, resulting in reduced conductivity.
In real materials that are not perfectly 1D, the gapping may
be incomplete, with portions of the electron bands remaining
metallic. Such phenomena are particularly accessible with
angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES). A group
of researchers from Germany and the U.S. performed a photoemission
study at the ALS of a quasi-1D metal, providing the first
direct spectroscopic observation at low temperature of the
electronic structure of the CDW system, niobium triselenide
(NbSe3).
Full story.
Publication about this research: J. Schaefer,
M. Sing, R. Claessen, E. Rotenberg, X.J. Zhou,
R.E. Thorne, S.D. Kevan, "Unusual Spectral
Behavior of Charge-Density Waves with Imperfect Nesting in
a Quasi-One-Dimensional Metal," Phys. Rev. Lett.
91, 066401 (2003).
Contact: Joerg Schaefer,
Joerg.Schaefer@Physik.Uni-Augsburg.DE
Users invited
to send strategic
planning input
As part of an ALS 10-year strategic-planning
exercise, the ALS and UEC will be meeting in Berkeley on June 9–10.
ALS management would like to invite the user community to
send input regarding strategic directions for the ALS to Neville
Smith (NVSmith@lbl.gov).
Earlier this year, during the first phase of this strategic
exercise, ALS management heard from beamline scientists their
views on the future of their fields and the resources that
will be needed for the scientific programs. The upcoming ALS/UEC
meeting will be the second phase of this process, as was reported
by UEC Chair Dennis Lindle in ALSNews
Vol. 239. Note that the workshops at this year's Users'
Meeting (see UEC Corner, below) will also provide input into
the ALS strategic plan, which will be presented to the Department
of Energy's Office of Basic Energy Sciences in a review tentatively
scheduled for late January 2005.
Contact: Neville Smith, NVSmith@lbl.gov
Call for general
sciences
proposals: Due July 7
The User Services Office is now accepting general user
proposals from scientists who wish to conduct research in
the general sciences at the ALS during the running period
from January through June 2005. The deadline for submissions
is Wednesday, July 7, 2004. Note that the ALS has slightly
altered its running periods to better coincide with the calendar
year. Beginning in 2005, cycles will run from January through
June and July through December.
In response to user requests, ALS User
Services has added features to the general sciences proposal
form. Users can now save a partially filled proposal for later
completion; proposals can be edited an unlimited number of
times before final submission. Enhanced page navigation options
are also available in the new and improved proposal form.
See the ALS online forms
page for more information.
Scientists wishing to renew a previous
proposal must download the short "ALS
Experiment Report and Request for Beamtime" form
and submit it to the User Services Office by the July 7
deadline. The form can be saved to your hard disk, filled
out, and attached in an email message to alsproposals@lbl.gov
with the key words "Experiment Report" in the subject
header. Proposals cannot be renewed for more than three cycles
after they are first submitted. After three rollover cycles,
a new proposal must be submitted. If your proposal is designated
ALS-00980 or lower, then you must submit a new proposal to
be eligible for beamtime.
The numeric rating for each proposal
will be communicated to the user along with any comments that
might have been added by the Proposal Study Panel. The cutoff
rating for each beamline in the previous proposal cycle is
published on the Web. The following resources are available
for further information:
ALS
User Services Administrator
General
user proposal process
Beamline
information
Proposal
Study Panel (PSP) scores
Contact: alsproposals@lbl.gov
UEC Corner: Notes
from the Users'
Executive Committee
by Dennis Lindle
 This
year's Annual Users' Meeting is scheduled to begin on October 18
and is co-chaired by UEC members Corie Ralston and Keith Jackson.
After last year's celebration of the ten-year anniversary
of the ALS, this year we plan to focus on the future of the
facility. Part of this crystal-ball gazing will be done with
a full slate of workshops covering a wide range of topics.
At this time, we expect workshops on the following topics
in conjunction with the Users' Meeting (organizers listed
in parentheses):
Basic Science of Synchrotron
Facilities
(David Robin)
New Directions in Hard X-Ray
Spectroscopy and Spectromicroscopy
(Matthew Marcus)
Photon-In and Photon-Out X-Ray
Spectroscopy in Nano Material Sciences and Chemical-Biological
Analysis
(Jonathan Denlinger and Jinghua Guo)
Advances in Crystallographic
Data Analysis and Acquisition
(Christine Trame)
X-Ray Microscopy: Advances and
Challenges
(Carolyn Larabell)
Nanoscience at Synchrotrons
(Lou Terminello)
Strongly Correlated Electron
Systems
(Byron Freelon)
More information on these workshops,
as well as the Users' Meeting, will be forthcoming in the
near future. I hope to see you all there!
I am pleased to announce that the User
Services Office has been working in cooperation with the Berkeley
Lab Site Access Office to provide a means for student experimenters
who only visit the ALS occasionally to have access to the
Lab by car (i.e., parking!) during regular working hours.
Permission can be requested on a case-by-case basis. Interested
users are encouraged to contact the User Services Office (alsparking@lbl.gov,
510-486-7745) for more details.
Contact: Dennis Lindle, lindle@unlv.nevada.edu
Deadline for
doctoral fellowships
extended to June 1
 The
application deadline for ALS doctoral fellowships in residence
for the 2004–2005 academic year has been extended to
June 1. Through these fellowships, qualified graduate
students will gain hands-on experience in the use of synchrotron
radiation by performing a major part of their thesis work
at the ALS. Applicants must be full-time Ph.D. students pursuing
synchrotron-radiation-based research in the physical or biological
sciences and have passed all qualifying or comprehensive verbal
and written examinations. Individuals from underrepresented
groups are encouraged to apply. Read
more.
(Contact: Zahid Hussain, ZHussain@lbl.gov)
ALS Users' Meeting
Design Contest
Everyone is invited to enter the new and improved ALS
Users' Meeting Design Contest. This year's contest is new
because the winning design will be featured for the first
time on the front of a cotton baseball hat, and improved because
one size fits all so we won't run out of anyone's size this
year! So take a minute from your busy day and come up with
a design—rough drawings, concepts, and polished artwork
are all acceptable—that includes the words "Advanced
Light Source" or "ALS" and submit it by Friday,
June 18 to
 |
Elizabeth Moxon
Berkeley Lab, MS 4R0230
Berkeley, CA 94720-8235
Email: ejmoxon@lbl.gov
Fax: (510) 495-2111 |
Please note: The area for artwork on
the front of the cap is 4 in. x 2.5 in. (10 cm
x 6.25 cm), so highly detailed images or photographs
may be difficult to reproduce.
Contact: Liz Moxon, EJMoxon@lbl.gov
Shutdown proceeding
on schedule
As we enter the final week of the maintenance
and installation portion of the shutdown, staff are working
diligently to wrap up all work in order to hand over the ALS
to the Accelerator Physics Group to begin the start-up procedure/process.
Installation of the W11.
Major tasks undertaken during the shutdown
such as the survey and realignment of the storage ring, replacement
of the W16 wiggler in Sector 5 with a W11 insertion device,
and replacement of the superbend cold heads are now in their
final stages.
Contact: Steve Rossi, SLRossi@lbl.gov |
