Embarking on the Next Chapter
NSLS-II Director Elke Arenholz shares updates on successful summer outreach activities, new beamlines, our upcoming 10-year anniversary of first light, and more
September 24, 2024
I hope you’ve all had an enjoyable summer and are feeling refreshed for the fall cycle. I’m excited to continue the News @ NSLS-II triannual newsletter to update staff, users, and the light source community on the latest news, achievements, and events here at NSLS-II. I have been fortunate to meet so many NSLS-II staff since starting in the role of NSLS-II director last month, and I look forward to meeting you, our users, as you return for the fall cycle. In the meantime, I wanted to use this opportunity to extend an introduction to all of you.
I have a long-held an appreciation for synchrotron facilities and the research they support, which is what drew me to this role and to NSLS-II. The journey started when I was a graduate student and postdoc developing instrumentation for magnetic materials research and leading some exciting research at the German Synchrotron BESSY as well as the Advanced Light Source (ALS).
These opportunities and challenges of user facilities shaped my experiences and, in turn, my career. During my time as associate director at the Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source (CHESS), I was able to help the facility adapt to the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic through remote experimentation.
Not all of my work has been at synchrotron facilities though. Before coming to NSLS-II, I was the director of the Physical Sciences Division at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Much like the user community here, this encompassed a diverse array of fields including catalysis, chemical physics, geochemistry, and materials science. You can read more about me in this recent article.
NSLS-II is an impressive facility, but it is truly defined by its staff and users. I am looking forward to working with all of you as we continue to push the limits of what we can achieve.
Summer outreach
This year, we hosted over 75 undergraduate and high school students that participated in several internships and research programs with mentors across the light source. They presented the results of their work at a lively symposium attended by fellow students and NSLS-II staff. We hope to see them again as future users.
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2024 NSLS-II interns and visiting faculty celebrate a successful summer during the annual Mini-Symposium.
NSLS-II was also busy this summer with a wide range of tours, summer schools, research projects, visiting faculty, and more. We gave 72 tours of the experimental floor to the public during our Summer Sunday Open House event this year! Over 1,500 members of the local community came to visit the light source during this event, which featured interactive family-friendly activities and displays, an inspiring talk about synchrotron science for sustainability presented by Tiffany Victor and Bruce Ravel, and the many tours given by staff and volunteers. We had about 100 volunteers that worked hard to plan this event and make it the great success it ended up being. I’d like to thank all of those that were involved, and I am eager to participate next year!
NEXT-II and NEXT-III project updates
The past four months have been packed with critical reviews for the NEXT-III project. These reviews involved the NSLS-II and NEXT-III team as well as staff from the BNL Project Management Center, who provided crucial support. We have made important progress on the Soft X-ray Nanoprobe (SXN) beamline, and the ARPES (Angle Resolved Photoemission) and RIXS (resonant Inelastic X-ray Scattering) imaging beamlines (ARI) being built as part of the NEXT-II project. We have passed through the final design review for the photon delivery system for both beamlines, which includes all of the mirrors, monochromators, beam pipes, and safety masks. These are now being manufactured. We passed a similar milestone, the preliminary design review, for the SXN endstation.
Factory acceptance testing of the ARI endstations was completed in early September. Installation is expected to begin early next year. These two endstations will be the first in the world to use traditional KB mirrors to achieve ~ 100 nm spot sizes in the soft X-ray region (40 eV to 1 keV), allowing >2 orders of magnitude more flux than existing nano-ARPES beamlines without sacrificing spot-size. ARI will be a unique multi-modal beamline capable of studying the correlation and variation of chemical, atomic, magnetic, and electronic structure at the nanoscale.
Maintenance period update
The summer maintenance period has recently come to a close. During the shutdown, a variety of maintenance and installation projects were competed, most notably the tie-in and commissioning of the additional RF cryo system cold box, which is planned to be fully operational early next year. In addition, maintenance occurred on the mechanical utility systems in the cooling tower, storage ring sextupole magnets, and pulsed power systems.
The Coherent Diffraction Imaging (CDI) beamline front end ratchet wall collimator was installed along with the remaining front end stand assemblies. The vacuum connections between the CDI front end stands have been made, the final leak check was completed, and the front end is now under static vacuum.
10-Year first light anniversary celebrations
On October 23rd, we will be marking an important milestone — 10 years since NSLS-II received first light! We have come such a long way in the past decade. This year, we have already seen over 2,200 users (an all-time high for us) and an impressively diverse array of research on our 29 operational beamlines. There is still so much more on the horizon with three new beamlines under construction, approval to start working on another set, and an impressive, proposed accelerator upgrade. I hope you can join us in celebrating where we started and the places that we’re going.
We were able to kick off the festivities during a large lab-wide celebration on September 10th. It was wonderful to feel the support of the entire Brookhaven Lab community and be entertained by the musical talent of some of our own NSLS-II staff. On September 25th, we enjoyed a celebratory breakfast leading up to the anniversary with a selection of breakfast treats, a team trivia event, and giveaways for all attendees. On October 23rd between 10:00 and 11:00 am, we will mark the anniversary date with cake, coffee, and a commemorative giveaway. We will also debut our “Stories from the Synchrotron” video to reflect on the last 10 years. Stay tuned for more details.
— Elke Arenholz, NSLS-II Director
