PIER Colloquium: X-Ray Imaging: Faster, Smaller and Brighter

Henry Chapman (DESY)
DESY Auditorium, 16.30 - 18.30

X-ray science, and structure determination in particular, has continuously developed since 1895 with an increase in source of brightness over that time of about 30 orders of magnitude. The development has culminated in large accelerator-driven radiation sources such as undulators and free-electron lasers, which are a big feature of the DESY campus. The bright laser-like beams from these sources have precipitated methodological advances for imaging complex forms of matter, such as biological macromolecules or man-made nanostructures.
An understanding of how to synthesise atomic-resolution images was developed 100 years ago by Bragg, and still forms the basis for ongoing research in structure determination and coherent imaging, but in ways that perhaps Bragg would not have imagined. Our ambitions are to use these new capabilities to overcome bottlenecks in macromolecular imaging and to form ultrafast snapshots of molecules in action, to piece together their motions and reactions.