Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has begun an upgrade to its Advanced Light Source to produce soft X-ray light that is 100 times brighter and nearly fully coherent, the laboratory announced on Aug. 24. The research facility uses light across infrared, ultraviolet, and X-ray spectrums to examine the physical shapes and chemical fingerprints of molecules down to the atomic level.
Technicians are replacing the magnets within the particle accelerator with newer, more compact models arranged to generate coherent light. The existing facility produces beams whose light waves are randomly out of phase. Because wave peaks and valleys hit test subjects at different points in their cycles, measurements combine disorder from the light source with disorder inside the sample itself, yielding a blurred average of the experimental data.
The upgraded layout forces the soft X-ray waves into phase, aligning their peaks and valleys. Berkeley Lab said this coherence creates detailed speckle patterns rather than smooth outlines, allowing scientists to separate beam noise from atomic anomalies in non-uniform samples.
Scientists will apply the brighter, coherent light to research in quantum materials, batteries, and microelectronics. For superconducting materials, where tiny irregularities dictate whether the material functions, the facility aims to locate structural flaws to help develop systems that transport electricity with zero loss.
