Active Projects - FY 2021
New LDRD Projects
Lead Scientist: Zeeshan Ahmed
This project pursues the development of high-channel-count, low-energy-threshold photon and particle calorimetry applications of microwave-multiplexed transition-edge sensors and kinetic inductance detectors.
Lead Scientist: Sergio Carbajo
Presented is a transformational new generation of photoinjectors to amplify the operational capacity of future ultrahigh beam brightness sources for linacs, XFELs and other accelerator-based facilities. As a front-end technology, this new family of photoinjectors has the potential for seminal impact across multi-mission facilities and a strong prospective linkage with strategic laboratory initiatives in machine learning, ultrafast X-ray sciences, and high data rate computation.
Lead Investigator: Georgi Dakovski
The focus of this project is on the multilayer optics that will form the basis of an optimized soft X-ray polarimeter achieving significantly higher efficiency than the present state-of-the-art. The intended outcome of the is the establishment of onsite expertise and the demonstration of key elements for an advanced design of a high-efficiency soft X-ray polarimeter.
Lead Scientist: Frederico Fiuza
This project aims to develop new ML tools to accelerate the modeling of petawatt laser-matter interactions and generation of secondary sources. These developments will be essential for the design and optimization of plasmas and materials studies and will be made available to support rapid progress in these and other areas of importance to SLAC, including accelerator research and plasma astrophysics.
Lead Scientist: Josef Frisch
The goal of this project is the development of calibration technology for a future 21cm intensity mapping survey to study dark energy and inflation. Phase calibration of the multiple antennas is a major challenge for a 21cm array, and radio sources mounted in high altitude drones are a potential solution to this challenge. This project addresses the key technologies for a drone-based calibration system.
Lead Scientist: David Goldhaber-Gordon
This project will develop a novel technique for parallelized assembly of vdW heterostructures over macroscopic (mm-cm) length scales, with high throughput and superb interfacial quality. These capabilities will be applied to address some of the most challenging materials challenges for QIS.
Lead Scientist: Ryan Herbst
This project will use machine learning inference models entirely deployed on a network of interconnected FPGAs allowing data to be pipelined for high throughput with ultra-low latency. This tool can be applied in a wide range of fields, including high repetition rate light sources, high-energy physics, large particle detectors (i.e., neutrino and dark matter experiments) and robotics.
Lead Scientist: Yijin Liu
This project seeks to develop an X-ray-speckle-illumination-based nano-resolution ghost imaging technique (termed nano-resolution X-ray speckle ghost imaging, NxSGi), which could simultaneously achieve phase contrast, dark-field contrast, and chemical contrast at a spatial resolution down to sub-50-nm level.
Lead Scientist: Agostino Marinelli
This project will explore the generation of Mega Ampere (MA) electron bunches and sub-100as TW-level X-ray pulses using plasma accelerators. This effort will also address electron beam compression to unprecedented peak currents.
Lead Scientist: Agostino Marinelli
This project will explore the use of the intense space-charge field generated by an electron beam in several ultrafast strong-field experiments from THz to UV wavelengths. The effort is aimed at expanding the range of scientific investigation enabled by this unconventional source of electromagnetic fields, by studying its application in strong-field impulsive ionization and in strong-field experiments in the THz frequency range.
Lead Scientist: Mianzhen Mo
This project seeks to determine the ultrafast materials behaviors of radiation-damaged materials using MeV-UED with the ultimate goal of cultivating the essential knowledge for future in situ characterization of radiation damage. Apart from enhancing the fundamental understanding of radiation damage physics, the outcome of this research will also help advance the development of defect control and use in crystalline materials that is of strong interest to many areas including semiconductor technology and quantum information science.
Lead Scientist: Ariel Schwartzman
This project in fundamental physics research is at the intersection of the energy, cosmic and quantum information frontiers, particularly, by developing key technologies to enable large-scale atom interferometry to search for ultra-light dark matter and to detect gravity waves. The emergence of ultra-precise quantum sensors has enabled unique new opportunities to expand the exploration of the universe beyond what can be achieved with existing technology.
Lead Scientist: Tom Shutt
This project brings together four exciting ideas that could each have a major impact on future dark matter (DM) and double beta decay (ßß) searches. Collectively, this work will help lay the foundation for future DM and ßß experiments.
Lead Scientist: Emma Snively
The goal of this project is to provide a technological solution to the unmet need for medical accelerators that can reach the required electron beam energies, exceeding 100 MeV, in a clinically compatible footprint. The proposed effort is to design and test a linac operating in the mm-wave regime (~100 GHz) that will enable high efficiency, high gradient performance for a new generation of ultra-compact medical accelerators.
Lead Scientist: Dimosthenis Sokaras
This project will employ synergistic expertise to develop a novel photocatalysis research platform that boosts the efficiency of photocatalysts relevant to mass-scale solar fuels. The expected outcomes will establish a widely applicable paradigm for addressing key photocatalysis questions relevant to the DOE’s solar fuels roadmap and initiatives.
Lead Scientist: William Tarpeh
The overall goal of the proposed research is to develop techniques that improve molecular understanding of how gas bubbles form at electrochemical solid-liquid interfaces. As many energy-relevant processes (e.g., photoelectrochemical energy storage, environmental catalysis, batteries, aqueous electrolysis) rely on electrochemical reactions at liquid-solid interfaces, developing foundational knowledge of how surface bubbles form and how they impact chemical reactivity at surfaces should enhance optimization and sustainability of industrial processes.
Lead Scientist: Christopher Tassone
This project seeks to develop a platform for in situ characterization of nucleation and growth kinetics to develop fundamental understanding of and deliberate control over microstructure formation and alloying. Site-specific control of microstructure will provide an enormous parameter space to synthesize materials using additive manufacturing processes at levels not currently achieved.
Lead Scientist: Jennifer Wierman
The project will further develop the Expand-Maximize-Compress (EMC) algorithm to expand the accessible resolution range and the range of crystal sizes tolerated for serial macromolecular crystallography (SMX) experiments. This effort will provide crucial data processing with EMC to increase resolution and provide useful statistics related to the SMX datasets.
Lead Scientist: Diling Zhu
While tremendous progress has been made in the area of nanofocusing, nanoscale X-ray imaging, high resolution spectroscopy, etc., many next generation measurement techniques call for increasingly precise manipulation of the X-ray beams in space and time. The goal of this project is to develop the required technical foundation and confidence in the construction of future large-scale X-ray beam transport systems for advanced instrumentations across the DOE light source facility.
