A new upgrade to the world’s most powerful X-ray free-electron laser has been given the go-ahead by the Department of Energy, paving the way for a futuristic new look at the world on the smallest scales.
The X-ray laser is the Linac (short for linear accelerator) Coherent Light Source (LCLS) at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park, California. Like other linear accelerators, SLAC’s machine moves electrons at near-light-speed to generate X-rays that can then be directed at microscopic samples, pieces of metal, and other small things to reveal how things work on the smallest scales. You can read a full breakdown of how LCLS works and see inside the particle accelerator here.
One year ago, SLAC announced first light in LCLS-II, which made the linear accelerator’s output about one million X-ray pulses per second, about 8,000 times brighter than LCLS. Now, work has officially begun on LCLS-II-HE (for “High Energy”), which will energize the accelerator’s output through the installation of long cryomodules that each contain eight superconducting cavities through which the electrons travel.
“Each cryomodule produces a burst of microwave energy that drives the bunch of electrons to move faster and faster (i.e., gain energy), like kicking a moving ball again and again,” Mike Dunne, LCLS’ director, told Gizmodo in an email. “For every additional meter of cryomodule, the electron beam will gain about 24 MeV additional energy,” he said. “When all stacked together, they increase the energy from the current limit of 4 GeV (4000 MeV) to 8 GeV.”
LCLS-II-HE is a major project—a $716 million project—that requires collaboration across a handful of the United States’ national laboratories to get over the line. The entire upgrade consists of 23 cryomodules, built and tested by the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Argonne National Laboratory designed the undulators that wobble the electrons to produce the X-rays. Michigan State University’s Facility for Rare Isotope Beams was also a partner on the major upgrade.
About 95% of the cryomodule cavities have been made to date, and 10 of the superconductive containers themselves have already been delivered to SLAC. Though the DOE only recently gave the full go-ahead on the project, it had previously approved the manufacturing and delivery of LCLS-II-HE components.
It’s hard to summarize all the scientific research advancements that could happen with the development of LCLS-II-HE, which is expected to be complete by 2030, though experiments could start as soon as 2027. The X-rays produced by the device can take sharp movies of reactions on the molecular scale, revealing everything from the foundations of photosynthesis to how metals transition between phases.
This month’s beamtime proposals for LCLS covered a range of fields, including materials science, chemistry and catalysis, atomic, molecular, and quantum science, astrophysics, fusion, and biosciences, Dunne told Gizmodo.
The energy grid, our understand of the cosmos, our computers and the internet—most sectors of life stand to gain from improved machines at SLAC. The new upgrade will also use machine learning and other artificial intelligence methods to help tune the accelerator, improving the beam performance and analyze the data produced by LCLS. There will be a lot of data; the machine’s production will jump from about 2 gigabytes per second to over 1,000 gigabytes per second.
“To put this into context, a typical online movie is about one GB, and so we’ll be processing the equivalent of a thousand movies per second—in which we need to study subtle changes in every frame of every movie—in real time!,” Dunne explained. “To counter this, we’re developing intelligent data systems that can extract out the key information, and compress the data to the greatest extent possible.”
With over a petabyte of data generated per day analyzing all aspects of the universe on an atomic scale, the team will need computational methods that can manage all that information.
Though LCLS-II-HE probably won’t be complete until the turn of the decade, the souped-up X-rays could be in use in just a few years. I hope you’re ready for the future—it’s coming soon.