Expanding the Frontiers of X-ray Science: The 4^th Generation Light Source at Argonne National Laboratory

Lahsen Assoufid

X-ray Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory, Lemont, IL 60439

assoufid@aps.anl.gov

The Advanced Photon Source (APS) at Argonne National Laboratory is one of the five U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science high brightness x-ray user facilities. It is the most powerful third-generation hard x-ray synchrotron radiation source, providing access to an extensive collection of x-ray tools and techniques that enable cutting edge research in a broad range of scientific research including materials, biomedical, environment, and energy science. This 7-GeV storage ring facility, with its 66 beamlines operating simultaneously around the clock, hosts more than 5,000 unique users per year from the U.S.A. and abroad. Research done at the APS has led to major discoveries that have helped advance our knowledge and had been of benefit to society as a whole. The 2009 and 2012 Nobel Prizes in Chemistry were awarded for discoveries based in large part on research at the APS.  With the increasing demand for large spatial coherence, small probe beams combined with high flux to explore new frontiers of science at nanoscale levels and short time scale levels, plans are underway to upgrade the APS storage ring with a multi-bend achromat lattice with the goal of improving the source emittance by a factor of about 50 and the coherence flux by factors of 100-1000× compared to the current APS. Taking full advantage of these new properties cannot be done without equal progress in beamline optics and instrumentation that benefit from revolutionary quality and design. After a brief introduction to x-ray synchrotron radiation, I will give a general overview of the APS and the APS upgrade and status. The rest of my presentation will be devoted to optics requirements and challenges and to APS activities and steps being taken to overcome some of those challenges in conjunction with the worldwide effort in this area.

*This work was supported by the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, under contract No. DE-AC-02-06CH11357.

Dr. Lahsen Assoufid

Physicist   and Group Leader,

Optics Group, X-ray Science Division

Argonne National Laboratory

9700 South Cass Avenue

Argonne, IL 60439

Phone: 1 630 252 2774

E-mail: assoufid@aps.anl.gov

Biography (updated September 26, 2014)

Dr. Lahsen Assoufid has more than 20 years of experience in synchrotron radiation optics and instrumentation research. He received his Ph.D. in physics in 1991 from the University of Paris 7, France, with his graduate research work performed at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York. After a short teaching experience as an instructor at the University of Pierre & Marie Currie, Paris, he joined Argonne National Laboratory in 1992 to work on research and development of high-power-load x-ray synchrotron radiation optics for the Argonne Advanced Photon Source (APS) project. In 2008, he became Section Leader for the Thin-Film Optics and Metrology Section of the Optics Group in the X-ray Science Division. In 2011 he was appointed Group Leader for the Optics Group.

His current research interests include development of nanofocusing and coherence-preserving x-ray optics and related characterization and instrumentation for diffraction-limited hard x-ray synchrotron radiation sources and free-electron lasers. Other areas of general interest include imaging and microscopy. He has published over 80 journal and conference papers. He served in a leadership role in the Chicago SPIE/Optical Society of Chicago Group from 2004 to 2007, where he contributed to educational outreach activities in the Chicago area. He has been an active member of The Optical Society (OSA) for more than 10 years, serving on various committees. He has organized and chaired a number of national and international conferences and workshops. In 2009, he served as program co-chair for the OSA 2009 Frontiers in Optics Annual Meeting and as general chair for the OSA 2011 Frontiers in Optics Annual Meeting. He is a Fellow of SPIE and OSA. He served as a member of the steering committee for the Advanced Photon Source User Organization.  He is also a member of the American Physical Society, the OSA, SPIE, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.