An LCLS Update
Saturday, February 07, 2009
I'm just flying back from the European XFEL Users Meeting that was held Jan. 27-28 in Hamburg Germany. The XFEL has started the civil construction although the XFEL company is still not in place. They had over 200 people there and our report on commissioning progress at LCLS was received with excitement. LCLS still has a 5 year lead, with XFEL expected to get first beam in 2014 and start operations in 2015. The European community will certainly be a major user of the LCLS; in fact, they outnumbered US scientists as proposers for our first experimental running period. We will start the AMO user program in late summer-early fall and operate until the normal SLAC December shutdown. The pace is picking up and the pressure is on to get the experimental hardware installed and commissioned in time for the run.
We're also focusing on the designs for the experimental hutches for the Far Experimental Hall with a completion date expected in fall of this year. Plans are underway to hold a workshop to focus attention on the sixth hutch science program: materials under extreme conditions. The dates will be set shortly, with planning focusing on end of March and beginning of April. Look for the announcement on the LCLS web site. The other area of attention is the data acquisition (DAQ), storage and on-line/off-line analysis. The initial LCLS operations will be AMO and the DAQ is progressing well, but we need to be ready for the users to have on-line data visualization to insure success for our early science. All in all, it's starting to feel like drinking from a fire hose and I don't expect it to let up any time soon. posted by Jerry Hastings @ 5:00pm
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