Shortest-Pulse X-Ray Beams Could Reveal Molecular Interactions

Ultrashort X-ray beams could in the near future serve as more sensitive medical diagnostic tools, and they could work similar to strobe lights to allow researchers to visualize chemical reactions that happen in femtoseconds.

Researchers from the University of Michigan (U-M; Ann Arbor, USA) used the Hercules high-intensity, table-top laser to create X-ray beams that rival those made in costly and massive synchrotron particle accelerators. The National Synchrotron Light Source II, for example, under construction at Brookhaven [US] National Laboratory (Upton, NY, USA), is slated to be a half-mile long. It is expected to cost more than US$900 million.

Researchers from Imperial College London (UK) and the Instituto Superior Téchnico Lisbon (Portugal) collaborated with U-M on this research, which was published online November 2010 in the journal Nature Physics.

"The development of accelerators and light sources has led to these very large systems and facilities that can only be accessed with a lot of preparation, by a few researchers,” said Chris McGuffey, a doctoral student in the U-M department of nuclear energy and radiological sciences. "We're bringing them to the university budget and university-scale laboratories. We expect this to open up more research possibilities.”

"Our findings show that it is possible to use lasers to produce an X-ray source for potential medical applications which is much more compact than conventional ones,” said Karl Krushelnick, associate director of the U-M Center for Ultrafast Optical Science. "This X-ray source also has the unique property that it is emitted in pulses that have an ultra-short duration so that so it can be used in science to measure processes with unprecendented temporal resolution.”

At 10 femtoseconds, the new beams are the shortest-pulse X-ray beams every created, according to Dr. McGuffey.

Related Links:
University of Michigan
Imperial College London
Instituto Superior Téchnico Lisbon