Active Projects - FY 2023
New LDRD Projects
Lead Scientist: Michal Bajdich
The predictive power of current state-of-the-art computational methods for catalysis and energy applications reached their inherent accuracy limit. This project will investigate if the gold-standard, chemical accuracy, quantum Monte Carlo method can be applied to heterogeneous catalysis and go beyond this accuracy limit. If successful, this would open a completely new research direction to a field of High-precision Heterogeneous Catalysis. Both static and dynamic properties of catalytic systems could be studied with resolution comparable to experiments and sometimes even overcoming them.
Lead Scientist: Peter Dahlberg
This work aims to combine time-resolved cryogenic electron microscopy (TR-CryoEM) and cryogenic electron tomography into a single approach, time resolved cryogenic electron tomography (TR-CryoET). The proposal centers on the construction of a time-resolved freezing apparatus that utilizes the mixing jet sample delivery technology of LCLS with a modified plunge freezer used for CryoEM sample preparation. The device will be capable of mixing two solution phase samples for defined times prior to freezing on electron microscopy grids, as is done in state-of-the-art TR-CryoEM. However, in this case, the solutions can contain either purified biomolecules or intact cells. Their mixing prior to freezing will allow the capture of structural intermediates either in vitro or in situ and the observation of inducible cellular processes with millisecond time resolution and nanometer spatial resolution.
Lead Scientist: Leland Gee
The natural biological systems for hydrogen evolution, methanogenesis, and methanotrophy are complex with convoluted maturation processes that are incongruous with optimizations for bio-applications. There is a need for simplified, versatile, and robust platforms to achieve bio-transformations of methane and hydrogen. This work will utilize the oxygen-transporting protein, myoglobin, with the naturally occurring iron heme metallocofactor removed, and reconstituted with either a nickel corrin that has been previously shown to evolve methane, or a cobaloxime prosthetic group that has been demonstrated to evolve hydrogen. These same cofactors will be inserted into horseradish peroxidase, which is a commercially available heme protein like myoglobin, but has electronic and structural differences that are expected to further facilitate the novel chemistry and has the benefit of sustainability by being plant-derived.
Lead Scientist: Shawn Henderson
This work will leverage unique capabilities at SLAC to build a lightweight, state-of-the-art detector readout platform for early-stage R&D in high energy physics and quantum information sciences, including low-mass dark matter scattering searches, quantum chromodynamic axion searches with approximately gigahertz cavities, non-standard interactions of neutrinos, next-generation spectroscopic cameras for Rubin and qubit controls. The proposed lightweight platform has a straightforward path to scale up to full high energy physics experiments. This project will port over the complex elements of the SLAC Microresonator Radio Frequency (SMuRF) electronics system firmware and software to the new, low-cost, lightweight, and faster Xilinx Radio Frequency System-on-Chip (RFSoC) platform and make the overall system much more flexible and configurable for high energy physics R&D use.
Lead Scientist: Jake Koralek
The work of this project will develop a high repetition-rate mid-infrared ultrafast laser source suitable for deployment at the upcoming LCLS-II/-HE instruments and for tabletop experiments at the Arrillaga Science Center. High rep-rate laser sources are readily available in the near infrared and visible spectral regions; however, they will typically excite a host of unwanted modes and lead to detrimental heating in quantum materials. This obstacle is most critical for the k-microscope, which is expected to be deployed at LCLS-II in 2023. A major R&D goal of this project is the optimization of the difference frequency mixing stages process for high average power and to find new material and wavelength combinations to increase conversion efficiency.
Lead Scientist: Chao-Lin Kuo
The quantum chromodynamic axion, a theoretical idea originated at SLAC, simultaneously solves a long-standing problem in particle physics (strong charge parity) and provides a compelling candidate for dark matter. This effort leverages SLAC’s unique technical expertise and facilities to advance a novel axion haloscope design for future high frequency Axion Dark Matter eXperiment (ADMX) searches. Conceived at the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology, this design can improve the scan rate for dark matter axions by more than three orders of magnitude in the centimeter-wave. The work of this project is based on a new space-filling thin-shell cavity design that avoids the precipitous degradation in sensitivity as a function of frequency.
Lead Scientist: Yu Lin
A fundamental understanding of the limits on synthesizability of metastable phases is crucial for establishing rational design principles and controlling pathways that lead to ultimate realization of novel materials. This work will explore the chemical and phase space adding pressure as a dimension and aims to discover new stable materials at high pressure that can be metastably quenched to ambient conditions. It initiates a multidisciplinary effort that will use state-of-the-art machine learning protocols, coupled with novel high-pressure synthesis, in situ experimental characterization, and theoretical modeling to discover innovative classes of halide perovskites, superhard materials, and superconducting hydrides at high pressure.
Lead Scientist: Kam Moler
With the advent of 2D van der Waals materials and developments in quantum information science, understanding novel phenomena on the nanometer scale is becoming ever more important. Scanning probe microscopy is an ideal tool to tackle these problems, however as the materials become smaller, the probes used to study them must also be developed. In the last decade efforts have been put into miniaturizing the superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) loop to sub-100 nanometer scale and scanning SQUID-on-tips as small as 40-nanometer effective diameter have already been demonstrated. However, their seemingly simple fabrication process lacks reproducibility. The objective of this work is to develop a recipe for batch produced nano-SQUID sensors.
Lead Scientist: Maria Elena Monzani
This project will develop a new paradigm for extreme rare-event searches by combining cutting-edge science-domain methods arising from dark matter searches with state-of-the-art ML techniques for anomaly detection. ML-enabled discovery in high energy physics requires overcoming significant algorithmic limitations; this work will explore probabilistic event detection at the Cosmic Frontier, using the specific yet extreme application of direct dark matter detection in terrestrial experiments. The goal of this project is to develop a new class of anomaly detection algorithms called Resilient Variational Autoencoders. Research here will also provide a methodology for other domains to perform extreme rare-event searches for exotic discoveries.
Lead Scientist: Mohamed Othman
This project will develop a scientific computing platform for virtual prototyping of nonlinear devices essential in quantum photonic interactions and transduction using the massively parallel, high-order finite element electromagnetic and multi-physics computational tool ACE3P (Advanced Computational Electromagnetics 3D Parallel). Quantum photonic transducers hold the potential for unprecedented spectral sensitivity in the exploration of biological, cosmological, and chemical processes, allow the transfer of quantum information and entanglement over long distances, and are key components in any quantum network node.
Lead Scientist: Clyde Smith
The aim of this project is to develop and apply novel approaches to enzyme and substrate photocaging, light-induced reaction initiation, and diffraction data collection that simplify time-resolved crystallography at SSRL and LCLS Macromolecular Femtosecond Crystallography (MFX) instrument. New approaches would usher experiments into a wide array of biological targets. To this end, the project will develop a generalized approach in the use of site directed caged amino acids in enzymes, providing access to biological systems hitherto inaccessible for photo-triggered time-resolved structural biology.
Lead Scientist: Caterina Vernieri
The detectors at future e+e- colliders will need unprecedented precision on Higgs physics measurements. These ambitious physics goals translate into very challenging detector requirements on tracking and calorimetry. This project will develop a new generation of Monolithic Active Pixel Sensors which can be built at wafer-scale, and with improved timing resolution by an order of magnitude beyond state-of-the-art, while maintaining low power consumption compatible with large area constraints. This will enable a new scale of physics performance for future tracker and calorimeter detectors at future e+e- colliders.
Lead Scientist: Faya Wang
Motion control is becoming more and more critical for modern large accelerator facilities, such as fourth generation storage ring based light sources, superconducting radio frequency accelerators, and high-performance photon beamlines. This project will develop a high precision active motion controller based on ML technology and electric piezo actuators. It will first develop a data-driven model for system motion dynamics, and then develop a model predictive controller. Finally, the performance of the controller will be verified on a real machine.
Lead Scientist: Thomas Wolf
This work will exploit the transformative experimental opportunities from the LCLS-II upgrade to demonstrate a novel approach to obtaining the missing structural information of intermediate species in ground-state chemistry. A pyrolysis source will be coupled to the reaction microscope (DREAM) endstation in Time-resolved Atomic, Molecular, and Optical science (TMO) instrument and investigate the structure of short-lived intermediates in the pyrolysis gas mixture by Coulomb explosion imaging. This approach will make use of the full megahertz repetition rate of LCLS-II. The goal of this project is to create extremely large and high-dimension datasets containing structural information of multiple gas-phase species.
