LA³NET and oPAC Fellows at the Symposium

This page shows a selection of Fellows' contributions at the Symposiums poster session.

FEMTOSECOND X-RAY IMAGING FEATURED IN POSTER SESSION

X-ray crystallography has been widely used to improve our knowledge of the structure and function of many biological molecules including vitamins, proteins and DNA itself, but the technique is limited to materials that can create a crystalline form. Also the samples are static, so it cannot be used to understand the motion of proteins.

It is possible that these problems can be overcome using ‘free-electron lasers’ but these are very large, sophisticated facilities, of which there are only a few in the world.

An alternative is emerging LA³NET fellow Andreas Döpp is developing a system that generates intense pulses of x-rays that last only a few femtoseconds (10-15 or one millionth of a billionth, of a second) and would be capable of imaging a protein unfolding in real time which would advance our knowledge of diseases such as Alzheimer’s and cancer.

In future this work will help to produce an alternative source of x-rays, with similar properties to those from free-electron lasers, but potentially smaller and cheaper.

Andreas will be presenting a poster at ‘Lasers & Accelerators for Science and Society’ symposium.

Details of the LA³NET Fellows projects are available here: https://www.liv.ac.uk/la3net/network-structure/trainees/

 

FOCUSING THE POWER OF THE BEAM FEATURED IN POSTER SESSION

A magnetic lens that focuses high-energy particle beams - a particle beam needs to be sharp in order to be effective. LA³NET fellow Jakob Krämer is designing, building and testing a magnetic lens that works with a new type of accelerator, which uses high-power lasers to accelerate a particle beam. This magnetic lens would increase the precision and power of the beam within a more compact accelerator.

Jakob a LA³NET fellow based at Danfysik, a Danish company that builds specialised equipment for particle accelerators. His project consists on designing, building, and testing a magnetic lens.

Jakob will be presenting a poster at ‘Lasers & Accelerators for Science and Society’ symposium.  

Details of the LA³NET Fellows projects are available here: https://www.liv.ac.uk/la3net/network-structure/trainees/

 

THE SECRETS OF THE COSMIC JIGSAW FEATURED IN POSTER SESSION

Unravelling secrets of the cosmic jigsaw – we still do not know what 85% of the matter in the universe consists of.  To try and understand this cosmic jigsaw scientists have been working on a ‘standard model of particle physics’ which describes all the fundamental particles we know and their interactions.

The gigantic Large Hadron Collider was built in order to do experiments that tested the model but now a more advanced accelerator is required to go even further and oPAC Fellows Emilia Cruz Alaniz and Alessandra Valloni are working on this; the design of a new electron-proton collider.

Details of the oPAC Fellows projects are available here: http://www.liv.ac.uk/opac/network-structure/fellows/

 

For those not able to attend the symposium there will be an opportunity to follow the talks via webcast: www.cockcroft.ac.uk/symposium-on-lasers-accelerators-for-science-and-society