able to harness all of that light and focus it into a very very small spot precision is everything takes an entire team working 24 7 to ensure the undulators are perfectly tuned the entire beam goes through here with five micron precision and so that's five microns out of the 130 meter length of this undulator hall and so you know better than a part per million in terms of precision and alignment probably one of the straightest objects in the world like other parts of slack undulator hall gets an upgrade for lcls2 its original line of magnets is replaced by two separate lines the line on the right generates hard x-rays those are x-rays with shorter wavelengths that can probe smaller structures particularly useful in material and biological sciences the line on the left generates soft x-rays with longer wavelengths which scientists can use to study energy and chemical reactions and now that we've got our x-rays scientists further down the line can make those molecular movies i'm going to jump up and down and be so excited we're gonna enable experiments that i've been wanting to do for years and years dr kryon works in what's known as near experimental hall

our next stop on the line this facility is broken up into four main areas known as hutches this one has some kind of cool stuff in it if we can duck in here real quick within these hutches scientists can swap out different experiments related to everything from molecular and atomic physics to biology and this is where the lcl s2 and its 1 million pulses per second become a game changer it's such a higher rep rate that we'll all of a sudden take experiments that we say that's not feasible and say it's doable and it's doable in a matter of days this ability to observe processes on different time scales will open up new doors for scientific research allowing scientists to answer questions they've been trying to solve for years how does energy transfer happen inside molecular systems how does charge transfer happen once we understand some of these principles we can start to apply them to understand how can we do artificial photosynthesis how can we better understand photovoltaic devices how can we build better solar cells i think it's absolutely fair to say that lcls2 will usher in a new era of science

all right so this is it we've finally reached the last stop of this incredibly long x-ray laser this is called feh or far experimental haul they're also running some experiments here and we're gonna go take a look at the very end of lcls you'll find four more hutches these ones are color coded and more fancy acronyms this is mfx which is the macromolecular femtosecond crystallography hutch and here we look at proteins viruses biological material in air this is really cool behind me there's four lasers in here now those lasers generate beams that are directed through there's a series of optics right there that you can see after getting directed through those optics they pass through this black tube here into this chamber also known as the mec or matter and extreme condition hutch

now in that chamber the scientists can use those lasers to simulate all sorts of extreme conditions anything from the core of the earth to the surface of the sun after generating these extreme conditions researchers use x-rays from lcls to capture images of how materials inside the chamber react in those exact moments we can focus on planetary interiors we can focus on impact or collision events so maybe the moon forming impact simulation we're generating high density plasmas much like our in the the interior of stars and we can watch what is happening on a very short time scale to these very hot dense plasmas

we also focus on a portfolio of material science applications so considering materials at extreme conditions what happens to the surface of a re-entry vehicle while most scientists at slack are eagerly awaiting the activation of lcls2 scientists here at feh are looking even further into the future often referred to as the upgrade to the upgrade lcls2 high energy is a project that will expand energy reach on the new line it means we can penetrate deeper into samples we can look at more complicated materials think about the earth's core made of iron in total the upgrade for lc ls2 runs about a billion dollars now

in just a couple weeks scientists are hoping to cool down those cryo modules that we saw earlier and then produce their first electron beam with lcl s2 then in summer of 2022 hopefully their first x-ray which they'll call their first big light event that's going to be just in time for the 60th anniversary of slack

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: eni'm about 30 feet underground right now at the slack national accelerator laboratory in northern california now down here in these tunnels they're building one of the world's most powerful lasers the lc ls2 every day thousands of people drive highway 280 between san francisco and silicon valley but few realize they're driving directly over one of the most advanced pieces of technology on the planet it's a device that pushes particles to nearly the speed of light and helps scientists unlock the origins of our universe before we go any further let's get some acronyms out of the way the lcls or lineac coherent light source is a more than two mile long particle accelerator a device that speeds up charged particles and channels them into a beam think of it like a microscope with atomic resolution allowing scientists to observe atoms and molecules in details never thought possible lcls is one of the most powerful devices of its kind in the world allowing researchers to watch chemical reactions as they happen observe the behavior of atoms inside stars and produce live snapshots detailing the process of photosynthesis it's the backbone of slack the stanford linear accelerator center a joint laboratory between the university and the us department of energy in operation since 1966 research at slack has netted four nobel prizes it's helped scientists understand the transmissions of diseases like zika allowed them to study air pollution on a micro scale and help develop stronger and lighter materials for the aerospace industry but what do lasers have to do with any of that stuff they help scientists create what they call molecular movies these are snapshots of atoms and molecules in motion shot within a few quadrillionths of a second and strung together like a film lcls is capable of making pulses all the way down below a femtosecond a femtosecond is to a second as the second is to the age of the universe at this time scale scientists can better understand how light and matter interact this is where the very first things happen that electrons inside of molecules absorb energy from a light pulse and then they transfer this energy into molecular vibrations or into motion scientists like james cryon use these movies to capture groundbreaking experiments in chemistry physics human health just about any scientific field you can think of back in 2009 slack scientists fired up lcls for the first time its most powerful accelerator to date lcls can produce up to 120 pulses or movie frames per second creating the brightest x-rays on the planet but this world-class machine is about to get the mother of all upgrades for the last five years scientists at slack have been building its next generation particle accelerator to work alongside lcls lcls2 is a superconducting accelerator that when finished will be 10 000 times brighter than its predecessor the laser will have the ability to produce up to 1 million pulses per second opening the door for experiments that are impossible today you think about a strobe light that goes off 120 times you see one image if it goes off a million times in a second you get a much different image so you can create a much better movie the lcl s2 upgrade stretches across about a third of the two plus mile stretch of the original lcls tunnel it all starts here at the superconducting electron accelerator or the gun as it's sometimes called this is the beginning of the electron's journey for lcl s2 the heart of the gun is that big cylinder its job is to use flashes of light to produce a stream of electrons or an electron beam those electrons get supercharged by a powerful radio frequency field on their way to the gun's exit that field is so powerful it produces about the same amount of heat as 80 microwaves on full power running continuously that's what all those orange hoses are for they pump water to keep the system cool after exiting the gun the electron beam travels through this string of 37 massive cryo modules something you won't find on the original lcls the lcls1 is a normal conducting machine so it's built with copper accelerating structures the lcls2 accelerators are designed to run continuously so it's a superconducting machine the cavities are made from niobium so niobium is a material that when you cool it down to liquid helium temperature it becomes superconducting the cryomodules are kept at a temperature of 2 degrees above absolute zero or minus 456 degrees fahrenheit and keeping them at that temperature is a massive operation in itself a team runs this cryo plant above ground that delivers super cooled helium to those cryo modules down below this is where we keep our ilium in the gas form so we have six storage of 110 cubic meter each we have a total inventory of about four tons of helium for the system next stop for the beam is what's known as the switch yard this is where the electrons from lcls and lcls2 get redirected to different lines depending on what type of experiment they're being used for earlier we were up at the start of the line and we saw that superconducting electron accelerator now we're about two miles away in what's known as undulator hall this is about a hundred meters of alternating magnets that convert that beam into x-rays the magnets spaced just a few millimeters apart are arranged in a pattern that pushes the electrons into a wiggling motion yes that is the technical term that undulating motion forces the electrons to emit some of their energy in the form of x-rays which bunch together and reinforce each other creating a boost in x-ray power that coherent light source well you can imagine an incandescent light bulb might be 60 watts but it's just radiating in any direction across a very wide spectrum of colors coherent radiation has a very well-defined direction almost as if you know you're able to harness all of that light and focus it into a very very small spot and precision is everything takes an entire team working 24 7 to ensure the undulators are perfectly tuned the entire beam goes through here with five micron precision and so that's five microns out of the 130 meter length of this undulator hall and so you know better than a part per million in terms of precision and alignment probably one of the straightest objects in the world like other parts of slack undulator hall gets an upgrade for lcls2 its original line of magnets is replaced by two separate lines the line on the right generates hard x-rays those are x-rays with shorter wavelengths that can probe smaller structures particularly useful in material and biological sciences the line on the left generates soft x-rays with longer wavelengths which scientists can use to study energy and chemical reactions and now that we've got our x-rays scientists further down the line can make those molecular movies i'm going to jump up and down and be so excited we're gonna enable experiments that i've been wanting to do for years and years dr kryon works in what's known as near experimental hall our next stop on the line this facility is broken up into four main areas known as hutches this one has some kind of cool stuff in it if we can duck in here real quick within these hutches scientists can swap out different experiments related to everything from molecular and atomic physics to biology and this is where the lcl s2 and its 1 million pulses per second become a game changer it's such a higher rep rate that we'll all of a sudden take experiments that we say that's not feasible and say it's doable and it's doable in a matter of days this ability to observe processes on different time scales will open up new doors for scientific research allowing scientists to answer questions they've been trying to solve for years how does energy transfer happen inside molecular systems how does charge transfer happen once we understand some of these principles we can start to apply them to understand how can we do artificial photosynthesis how can we better understand photovoltaic devices how can we build better solar cells i think it's absolutely fair to say that lcls2 will usher in a new era of science all right so this is it we've finally reached the last stop of this incredibly long x-ray laser this is called feh or far experimental haul they're also running some experiments here and we're gonna go take a look at the very end of lcls you'll find four more hutches these ones are color coded and more fancy acronyms this is mfx which is the macromolecular femtosecond crystallography hutch and here we look at proteins viruses biological material in air this is really cool behind me there's four lasers in here now those lasers generate beams that are directed through there's a series of optics right there that you can see after getting directed through those optics they pass through this black tube here into this chamber also known as the mec or matter and extreme condition hutch now in that chamber the scientists can use those lasers to simulate all sorts of extreme conditions anything from the core of the earth to the surface of the sun after generating these extreme conditions researchers use x-rays from lcls to capture images of how materials inside the chamber react in those exact moments we can focus on planetary interiors we can focus on impact or collision events so maybe the moon forming impact simulation we're generating high density plasmas much like our in the the interior of stars and we can watch what is happening on a very short time scale to these very hot dense plasmas we also focus on a portfolio of material science applications so considering materials at extreme conditions what happens to the surface of a re-entry vehicle while most scientists at slack are eagerly awaiting the activation of lcls2 scientists here at feh are looking even further into the future often referred to as the upgrade to the upgrade lcls2 high energy is a project that will expand energy reach on the new line it means we can penetrate deeper into samples we can look at more complicated materials think about the earth's core made of iron in total the upgrade for lc ls2 runs about a billion dollars now in just a couple weeks scientists are hoping to cool down those cryo modules that we saw earlier and then produce their first electron beam with lcl s2 then in summer of 2022 hopefully their first x-ray which they'll call their first big light event that's going to be just in time for the 60th anniversary of slack i'm andy altman thank you so much for watching don't forget to like and subscribe if you enjoyed this video and i'll see you in the future\n"