World-wide User Facilities
Photo Gallery
User Facilities
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The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National
Laboratory is a world-class scientific research facility that began
operation in 2000, following 10 years of development and construction.
Hundreds of physicists from around the world use RHIC to study what the
universe may have looked like in the first few moments after its creation.
RHIC drives two intersecting beams of gold ions head-on, in a subatomic
collision. What physicists learn from these collisions may help us
understand more about why the physical world works the way it does, from the
smallest subatomic particles, to the largest stars.
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National Synchrotron Light Source - The
National Synchrotron
Light Source (NSLS) at Brookhaven National Laboratory is a
national user research facility funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s
Office of Basic Energy Sciences. The NSLS produces intense light that spans
the electromagnetic spectrum from the infrared through x-rays. Each year,
over 2500 scientists from universities, industries, and government labs
perform research at the NSLS in the life, physical, chemical, environmental,
and materials sciences.
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William R. Wiley Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory - The
William R. Wiley
Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL), a U.S. Department of
Energy national scientific user facility, is located at Pacific Northwest
National Laboratory (PNNL) in Richland, Washington. EMSL is operated by PNNL
for the DOE Office of Biological and Environmental Research.
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Los Alamos Neutron Science Center - The
Los Alamos
Neutron Science Center, or LANSCE, is an accelerator-based
multidisciplinary facility that provides extraordinary research
opportunities in basic and applied research for civilian and defense
applications.
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Lujan Center - As a national user facility, the
Lujan
Center provides instrumentation and support for scientists, engineers,
and students to study materials science and engineering, condensed-matter
physics, polymer science, chemistry, earth sciences, structural biology, and
neutron-nuclear-science research.
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Center for Functional Nanomaterials - The Brookhaven National
Laboratory Center for Functional Nanomaterials will provide researchers with
state-of-the-art capabilities to fabricate and study nanoscale materials.
Functional materials are those which exhibit a predetermined chemical or
physical response to external stimuli. The Center¹s focus is to achieve a
basic understanding of how these materials respond when in nanoscale form.
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Advanced Light Source (Dome) - The
Advanced Light Source
(ALS) at Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is one of the
world's brightest sources of vacuum-ultraviolet (VUV) light and
long-wavelength (soft) x rays, while also serving as a world-class source of
short-wavelength (hard) x rays and infrared radiation. From its site on a
hillside above the University of California, Berkeley, campus where it
overlooks San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge, the ALS welcomes
experimenters from universities, industries, and government laboratories
around the world for scientific and technological research involving the
atomic, chemical, electrical, and magnetic structure of atoms, molecules,
biological materials, solids, and other forms of condensed matter.
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Advanced Light Source (Inside Facility) - The
Advanced Light Source
at Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is one of the
world's brightest sources of vacuum-ultraviolet (VUV) light and
long-wavelength (soft) x rays, while also serving as a world-class source of
short-wavelength (hard) x rays and infrared radiation. Residing inside a
circular building capped by the historic dome that once sheltered Lawrence's
famed 184-Inch Cyclotron, the ALS welcomes experimenters from universities,
industries, and government laboratories around the world for scientific and
technological research involving the atomic, chemical, electrical, and
magnetic structure of atoms, molecules,biological materials, solids, and
other forms of condensed matter.
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Advanced Photon Source - The
Advanced Photon Source
at Argonne National Laboratory is a national synchrotron-radiation light source research facility funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences. Using high-brilliance x-ray beams from the APS, members of the international synchrotron-radiation research community conduct forefront basic and applied research in the fields of materials science; biological science; physics; chemistry; environmental, geophysical, and planetary science; and innovative x-ray instrumentation. During the past year, well over 3000 individual users conducted research at the APS. When all 70 beamlines are operational, that number is expected to grow to more than 4000 annually. At the APS, scientists from different institutions, disciplines, and career stages can work together easily. University professors and students interact daily with colleagues from industry and national laboratories, exchanging ideas both formally and informally through collaborations, seminars, and impromptu discussions. These symbiotic relationships pay real dividends in enhanced research quality and scientific
productivity.
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Linac Coherent Light Source - The
Linac
Coherent Light Source (LCLS) will be the world's first x-ray free
electron laser when it becomes operational in 2009. LCLS is currently in the
detailed project engineering and design phase, with a construction start
planned in FY2005. Pulses of x-ray laser light from LCLS will be many orders
of magnitude brighter and several orders of magnitude shorter than what can
be produced by any other x-ray source available now or in the near future.
These characteristics will enable frontier new science (click box below to
explore LCLS science) in areas that include discovering and probing new
states of matter, understanding and following chemical reactions and
biological processes in real time, imaging chemical and structural
properties of materials on the nanoscale, and imaging non-crystalline
biological materials at atomic resolution. The LCLS project is funded by the
U.S. DOE and is a collaboration of six national laboratories and
universities. They are in early construction phases, so there is no photo of
the facility. Here is an artists sketch of the project.
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Spallation Neutron Source - The Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) is
an accelerator-based neutron source being built in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, by
the U.S. Department of Energy. The SNS will provide the most intense pulsed
neutron beams in the world for scientific research and industrial
development. At a total cost of $1.4 billion, construction began in 1999 and
is on schedule and within budget for completion in 2006.
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The Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory (SSRL) - a division
of Stanford Linear Accelerator
Center, is operated by Stanford
University for the
Department of Energy. SSRL is a National User Facility which provides
synchrotron radiation, a name given to x-rays or light produced by electrons
circulating in a storage ring at nearly the speed of light. These extremely
bright x-rays can be used to investigate various forms of matter ranging
from objects of atomic and molecular size to man-made materials with unusual
properties. The obtained information and knowledge is of great value to
society, with impact in areas such as the environment, future technologies,
health, and education. SSRL is primarily supported by the DOE Offices of
Basic Energy
Sciences and
Biological and
Environmental Research, with additional support from the
National Institutes of Health,
National Center for Research Resources,
Biomedical Technology Program, and the
National Institute of General Medical Sciences.
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Holifield Radioactive Ion Beam Facility - Research involves the
basic building blocks of matter--atoms, nuclei, and subnuclear particles.
Their properties may be determined from the particles and other types of
radiation ejected when violent collisions occur between atoms or nuclei.
Computers are used to control the experiments and record the data in studies
of the emitted radiation. The tour includes a visit to the facility that
houses the world's largest Van de Graaff accelerator, one of the three large
accelerators, or "atom smashers," used in these bombardment studies.
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ATLAS (A Toroidal LHC ApparatuS) - Physicists at BNL are
participating in one of the most ambitious scientific projects in the world.
They are building a machine the size of a seven-story building that will
open up new frontiers in the human pursuit of knowledge about elementary
particles and their interactions. The machine, dubbed ATLAS (A
Toroidal LHC ApparatuS), is one of four facilities to be located at a
powerful accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), now under
construction near Geneva, in Switzerland.
ATLAS is designed to detect
particles created by the proton-proton collisions. One of the its main goals
is to look for a particle dubbed Higgs, which may be the source of mass for
all matter. Findings may also offer insight into new physics theories as
well as a better understanding of the origin of the universe.
Brookhaven National Laboratory is the headquarters for the 33 U.S.
institutions contributing to the project. In total, 150 laboratories and
universities around the world are involved in developing and testing parts
of ATLAS.
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The Center for Nanoscale Materials (CNM) - Understanding and
control of material properties at the nanometer scale promises tremendous
potential for the advancement of science and technology. The Center for
Nanoscale Materials (CNM) at Argonne National Laboratory is one of five
Nanoscale Science Research Centers sponsored by the U.S. Department of
Energy (DOE), offering advanced facilities and expertise to support
independent and collaborative research efforts in this area. The Center
focuses on eight primary research themes:
- Bio-Inorganic Interfaces
- Complex Oxides
- Nanocarbon
- Nanomagnetism
- Nanophotonics
- Theory and Simulation
- Nanopatterning
- X-Ray Nanoprobe
One unique capability at the CNM is the nanoprobe being built that will
advance the state of the art by providing a hard x-ray microscopy beamline
with the highest spatial resolution in the world. It will provide for
fluorescence, diffraction, and transmission imaging with hard x-rays at a
spatial resolution of 30 nm or better. A dedicated source, beamline, and
optics will form the basis for these capabilities. This unique instrument
will not only be key to the specific research areas of the CNM; it will also
be of general utility to the broader nanoscience community in studying
nanomaterials and nanostructures, particularly for embedded structures.
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Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies (CINT) - The CINT community
will have access to dedicated research capabilities in a new 93,000-ft2 core
facility in Albuquerque, the new CINT Gateway to Los Alamos, and the
existing CINT Gateway to Sandia. Together, these three facilities will
provide laboratory and office space for researchers to synthesize and
characterize nanostructured materials, theoretically model and simulate
their performance, and integrate nanoscale materials into larger-scale
systems in a flexible, clean-room environment.
CINT researchers will also have streamlined access to user facilities at
both locations, including the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center and the
National High Magnetic Field Laboratory. Through the CINT Gateways,
researchers will be able to access leveraged Los Alamos and Sandia
capabilities in biosciences, microelectronics, nanofabrication and
computing.
The Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) - SLAC is one
of the world’s leading fundamental science research laboratories. Our
mission is to design, construct and operate state-of-the-art particle
accelerators and related experimental facilities used by physics studies
probing the fundamental forces and structure of matter. The Stanford
Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory (SSRL), a premier national user facility at
SLAC, enables research requiring ultra high-intensity x-ray beams for
molecular and atomic scale studies in physics, biology, chemistry, medicine,
and environmental science. The BABAR collaboration investigating
matter/anti-matter asymmetry is a current focus of high-energy physics, as
is a vigorous R&D program focused on development of the Next Linear Collider,
as part of a world-wide effort for this future facility. SLAC, operated by
Stanford University for the Department of Energy, Office of Science, is 40
miles south of San Francisco, California.
The Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), is named
after Enrico Fermi and is an accelerator facility largely devoted to
providing beams for experiments in elementary particle physics. Two
multi-university experimental collaborations study high energy collisions of
protons and antiprotons at the Tevatron accelerator. Additionally, two
experiments perform searches for rare processes in the interactions of
neutrinos using a pair of dedicated neutrino beam lines, and a number of
astrophysics experiments are also underway. Fermilab also supports its users
in their preparations for participation in the Large Hadron Collider in
Geneva, Switzerland, which will commence operations later in the decade, and
is conducting R&D along with other national labs and universities around the
world toward the development of a possible "International Linear Collider"
facility to study multi-TeV electron-positron collisions.
The Intense Pulsed Neutron Source (IPNS) at Argonne National
Laboratory is a National User Facility for performing neutron scattering
experiments to determine the properties of materials by studying atomic
arrangements and motions in liquids and solids. IPNS provides qualified
users with reliable optimized neutron scattering instruments; provides users
the assistance of experienced scientific and technical staff; and ensures
the safe and timely completion of users' experiments
Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source (CHESS)
is a unique facility successfully embedded in the dynamic Cornell academic
environment yet operating as a national research facility. Our facility
offers users in both academia and the private sector, the ability to do
synchrotron research in the physical, engineering, biological and
macromolecular crystallography sciences.
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The Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences (CNMS)
at Oak Ridge National Laboratory is a
collaborative nanoscience user research facility for the synthesis,
characterization, theory/ modeling/ simulation, and design of nanoscale
materials. It is one of five
Nanoscale Science Research Centers established by the
Office of Science, U.S. Department of
Energy. The CNMS provides more than 250 researchers each year with
access to capabilities in the following areas:
• Macromolecular Nanomaterials
• Catalytic Nanosystems
• Functional Hybrid
Nanostructures
• Scanning Probes
• Electron Microscopy, Neutron
and X-ray Scattering
• Nanomaterials Theory
• Nanofabrication Research
Laboratory
The CNMS conducts research that is focused on understanding, designing
and controlling the dynamics, spatial chemistry, and energetics of
functionality and properties of nanoscale materials and architectures and
organized around three Scientific Themes: Imaging Nanoscale Functionality;
Synthesis and Dynamics of Nanostructured Polymeric and Hybrid Materials; and
Emergent Behavior in Nanoscale Systems.
Last Modified: February 1, 2008
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