Submitting LCLS Proposals

The Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) encourages scientists from diverse fields to propose experiments utilizing the LCLS's unique capabilities.

Access to LCLS is open to the international community. There is no cost to submit proposals or conduct experiments at LCLS. However, users are responsible for their own travel expenses and (in rare cases) for any extraordinary consumables required by the experiment.

Register as a user and submit LCLS proposals
through the User Portal

Read the proposal preparation guidelines, along with information on the new standard configurations, and the proposal review process prior to writing your proposal.

Users are encouraged to review the LCLS instrument descriptions and contact LCLS instrument scientists to discuss technical capabilities and proposed experiments.

Standard Configuration Beam Time

Selected areas will operate for some part of the Run in a contiguous block of time during which the instrument will be in a Standard Configuration. The intent is to reduce the amount of time that is taken each run tearing down, setting up, and testing the same configurations at different times throughout the run. The reduced amount of setup and test time has resulted in significantly more users and experiments being allocated beam time. If you feel your experiment is able to operate in a Standard Configuration for one of the instruments, please indicate this in your proposal and follow the directions provided. See the Standard Configuration page for more details.

In addition, LCLS is encouraging "Data Collection" proposals which are intended to be short (typically one to two 12-hour shifts), where it is assumed that a suitable standard configuration is ready to go and requires no alignment time, and a single shift is expected to be sufficient to produce a full data set suitable for publication. These "Data Collection" proposals are expected to be particularly suitable, but not limited, to protein crystallography. "Data Collection" proposals should be highlighted as such in the proposal title and are limited to using existing standard configurations.

SSRL Beam Time

User feedback has suggested that for some LCLS proposals, the science case can be significantly enhanced by having access to SSRL beam time in addition to proposed LCLS time. For this proposal call, LCLS will consider a limited number of proposals that make a strong scientific case for beamtime access to SSRL. These proposals should indicate how much time is requested, when the time would be needed relative to the LCLS time, as well as which SSRL beamline would be needed. If Users have questions about which SSRL beamlines would be appropriate for the proposed scientific goals, please contact Piero Pianetta (pianetta@slac.stanford.edu). Scheduling of time across facilities is complicated and availability depends strongly on which of the SSRL beamlines is requested.