The DOE Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (DOE EPSCoR) encourages partnerships between national labs and researchers in qualifying states and territories. An EPSCoR collaboration with researchers from Kentucky has resulted in an ALS highlight, career advancement for young scientists, and a larger, center-scale proposal. Read more »
Artificial Spin Ice Toggles Twist in X-Ray Beams on Demand
ALS studies helped scientists understand how a nanoscale magnetic lattice (an artificial spin ice) acts as a toggle switch for x-ray beams with spiral character. The findings represent an important step toward the development of a versatile new tool for probing or controlling exotic phenomena in electronic and magnetic systems. Read more »
Chiral Spin Textures in Amorphous Iron–Germanium Thick Films
Robert Streubel and co‐workers report the formation of topological magnetization vector fields in disordered materials with local inversion symmetry breaking, harnessing high‐resolution Lorentz microscopy, quantitative x‐ray microspectroscopy, and coherent scattering. The image shows the reconstructed in‐plane magnetic induction of closely packed Bloch skyrmions embedded into helical spins. Read more »
COSMIC Achieves First Light
On Wednesday, March 29, the COherent Scattering and MICroscopy (COSMIC) Beamline (7.0.1) achieved first light, a significant milestone in the ALS’s plans to capitalize on recent gains in soft x-ray coherence provided by modern storage-ring light sources. Read more »