Quick Shot
Danae Polsin, First LLE Principal Investigator at the LCLS Facility at SLAC
September 13, 2021
Bob Nagler (LCLS scientist), Linda Hansen (UR graduate student), Alex Chin (UR graduate student also visible in the inset), Hae Ja Lee (LCLS scientist), Ethan Smith (UR graduate student), and Danae Polsin (LLE scientist). Not pictured is Sam Vinko (Oxford scientist).
As part of a collaboration with the University of Rochester, Oxford University, UPMC Paris, and AWE, LLE scientist and Principal Investigator Danae Polsin and her team of researchers traveled to Stanford University as the first team from LLE to perform an experiment at the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) at the Matter at Extreme Conditions (MEC) hutch. The LCLS facility is part of the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. Experiments were performed that combined a novel flavor of resonant inelastic x-ray scattering (RIXS) and x-ray diffraction (XRD) to study Fe oxides (Fe2O3, and FeO) on the MEC end station at LCLS. The time-resolved experiment, “Electronic structure of Fe oxides in conditions of the Earth’s lower mantle,” probed a broad range of compression conditions on laser-driven samples across a range of temperatures, densities, and phase transitions. Iron oxides are among the major constituents of the interior of the Earth’s mantle and exhibit rich polymorphism. Understanding their electronic as well as structural properties and how these change as a function of temperature and pressure is of fundamental interest and importance to planetary physics. LLE is a partner in the MEC-Upgrade project and will provide the long-pulse laser for the new end station.