UEC Corner:
Notes from the Users'
Executive Committee
by Greg Denbeaux
 I
want to take this opportunity to introduce myself and the
other Users' Executive Committee (UEC) members. For 2005,
I will be Chair of the UEC, and Clemens Heske will be Vice
Chair. Please welcome the newly elected members of the UEC.
They are Tony van Buuren, Jinghua Guo, Amanda Hudson, and
Simon Morton. I want to thank Dennis Lindle who was Chair
of the UEC last year for all of his efforts. The other returning
members of the UEC are Dan Dessau, Keith Jackson, Gary Mitchell,
Corie Ralston, and Ed Westbrook. We are here to support your
needs, so please contact me or anyone else on the UEC with
any questions, comments, or complaints. You can read more
about the members and get their contact information at the
UEC's
newly created independent Web site.
I'm pleased to have this opportunity
to represent you as Chair of the UEC. I have been a synchrotron
user since the mid-1990s. I have spent time at the Duke University
Free Electron Laser Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National
Laboratory at the Center for X-Ray Optics, and now I'm at
the University at Albany in the College of Nanoscale Science
and Engineering. My research interests include x-ray microscopy,
extreme ultraviolet lithography, and nanomagnetism.
It should be a busy year for the UEC.
The recurring project of organizing the Users' Meeting is
always a large undertaking. I want to give a special thanks
to Simon Morton and Jinghua Guo, who have agreed to chair
the Users' Meeting. That will take place October 20–21,
so please save those dates.
Contact: Greg Denbeaux, GDenbeaux@uamail.albany.edu
Director's update:
Recent milestones
and future challenges
by Janos Kirz
 It
has been an honor and a privilege to be Acting ALS Division
Director while Daniel Chemla is recuperating from surgery.
I am immensely grateful for the division staff, especially
the division deputies—Ben Feinberg, Jim Krupnick and
Neville Smith—for their dedication and enthusiastic
support during this challenging time. The good news is that
Daniel is continuing to improve!
I bring unique qualifications to the
job: I have been, and continue to be, an ALS user. I have
gone through the proposal process, set up an account, stayed
in the ALS apartments, and enjoyed the help and support of
the staff at every level. Having worked at all four of the
Department of Energy (DOE) light sources, I know from experience
what a remarkable facility the ALS is. To move it to even
greater levels of excellence is my goal.
2004 was indeed another outstanding year
for the ALS:
- The number of users hit another
all-time record of 1898.
- The number of refereed publications
based on work at the ALS also reached a new record.
- The number of new structures deposited
in the Protein Data Bank reached a new record as well.
- The Users' Meeting had record attendance
and an outstanding set of 10 workshops.
- Preparations for top-off operation
made excellent progress, and we received funding from DOE's
Office of Basic Energy Sciences (DOE/BES) to move ahead
with the project.
- We prepared a new strategic plan,
designed to keep the ALS at the forefront of synchrotron
radiation based science for the coming decade and beyond.
- We put much effort into maintaining
a safe environment, and with the excellent cooperation of
the user community we were able to maintain an outstanding
safety record.
The latter part of the year was taken
up in part by the Division's preparations for our three-year
review by DOE/BES and by the University of California's preparations
to make a bid for the continued management of Berkeley Lab,
both of which took place last month. While the formal reports
have not been received as yet, I feel that the review went
very well, and that the bid will be accepted by DOE.
While there is much to be proud of, this
is no time to celebrate: there are serious clouds on the horizon.
The President's budget request for fiscal year 2006 calls
for a cut in the budget for the DOE's Office of Science. If
this budget is enacted by Congress, the light sources and
neutron sources operated by BES are facing significantly reduced
operations and the closing of several beamlines. I understand
that the ALS UEC is working with the other facilities' user
groups to make you aware of the gravity of the situation and
to provide you with an opportunity to have your voices heard
on this subject.
It has been a pleasure to work with the
UEC, chaired in 2004 by Dennis Lindle. In 2005 I am looking
forward to working with the UEC chaired by Greg Denbeaux.
The ALS is here to support users in doing outstanding science
in a safe environment. The input of the user community is
critical to our ability to fulfill this mission!
Contact: Janos Kirz, JKirz@lbl.gov
ARPES provides
direct evidence
of spin-wave coupling
by Lori Tamura
The electronic properties of a metal
are determined by the dynamical behavior of its conduction
electrons. Conventional band theory accounts for the interaction
of the electrons with the static ion lattice. However, coupling
to further microscopic degrees of freedom can alter the electron
dynamics considerably. For example, "conventional"
superconductivity emerges as a result of the electrons' interaction
with lattice vibrations (phonons). In magnetic materials,
coupling with spin waves (magnons) is also expected. Such
interactions may contribute to high-temperature superconductivity
in novel materials. Unfortunately, lattice vibrations and
spin waves have similar energy scales, hindering detailed
study. Researchers have taken a new approach in analyzing
the electron bands of ferromagnetic iron. Angle-resolved photoemission
spectroscopy (ARPES) provides direct spectroscopic evidence
of altered electron mass and energy (quasiparticle formation)
in a magnetic solid due to coupling with spin waves. Full
story.
Publication about this research: J. Schäfer,
D. Schrupp, E. Rotenberg, K. Rossnagel, H. Koh, P. Blaha,
and R. Claessen, "Electronic quasiparticle renormalization
on the spin wave energy scale," Phys. Rev. Lett.
92, 097205 (2004).
Contact: Joerg Schäfer,
joerg.schaefer@physik.uni-augsburg.de
Plutonium decontamination
agent
characterized at ALS
In an on-going effort to design and synthesize
chemical substances that can safely and effectively remove
plutonium and other radioactive materials from the human body
or from the environment, scientists at Berkeley Lab have made
an important advance. Using the exceptionally bright and intense
x-ray beams of the ALS' Small-Molecule Crystallography Beamline
(11.3.1), they have determined the crystal structure of a
molecular complex that has shown promise as a sequestering
agent for plutonium and other members of the actinide family
of elements.
David Shuh, Anne Gorden, and Kenneth
Raymond.
"This is the first plutonium complex
that has been characterized using single-crystal x-ray diffraction
with a synchrotron radiation source like the ALS," says
Anne Gorden, the Glenn T. Seaborg Center Postdoctoral Fellow
with Berkeley Lab's Chemical Sciences Division (CSD), and
one of the co-authors of a paper on this work which appears
in an upcoming issue of Chemistry, a European Journal.
Collaborating with Gorden on this research were David Shuh,
a senior staff scientist in CSD, plus Bryan Tiedemann, Richard
Wilson, Jide Xu, and Kenneth Raymond, all of whom hold appointments
with Berkeley Lab's Seaborg Center and/or the Chemistry Department
of the University of California at Berkeley. Full
story.
Contacts: Anne Gorden, AEGorden@lbl.gov;
David Shuh, DKShuh@lbl.gov;
Kenneth Raymond, KNRaymond@lbl.gov
Register now
for the Stanford-Berkeley
Synchrotron Summer School
 The
fourth Stanford-Berkeley Summer School, to be held June 13–17,
2005, will provide basic lectures on the synchrotron radiation
process, requisite technologies, and a broad range of scientific
applications. The application deadline is Sunday, May 8, 2005.
Visits to both the ALS in Berkeley and the Stanford Synchrotron
Radiation Laboratory (SSRL) will be included, with opportunities
to interact with the professional staff and graduate students
at both facilities. The Summer School will be limited to approximately
40 graduate students, with a preference for those pursuing
doctoral research in the physical sciences in which synchrotron
radiation is expected to play a significant role. The summer
school is jointly sponsored by the University of California
at Berkeley, Stanford University, Lawrence Berkeley National
Laboratory, and the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory.
Lectures will be presented by professors and scientists from
these four organizations and their user communities. The summer
school will be housed at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center.
Co-chairs of the summer school are Anders Nilsson and David
Attwood.
Details
describing the summer school, planned lectures, housing,
costs, and how to apply are posted online. Applications should
include a brief academic record, a statement describing the
intended research area and how a knowledge of synchrotron
radiation would enhance those studies, a list of publications
(if any), and information on how to reach the applicant by
email and phone through the period extending to the time of
the summer school.
Contacts: David Attwood, attwood@eecs.berkeley.edu;
Anders Nilsson, nilsson@ssrl.slac.stanford.edu |
