XFELS focus of Lloyd Rees Lecture

The 2016 Lloyd Rees Lecture, ‘X-ray lasers: the new wave in diffraction’, was delivered by Professor Keith Nugent FAA in Melbourne in October.

Professor Nugent began his lecture with an overview of the physics underpinning X-ray Free-Electron Lasers (XFELS) and of the various XFELs now operating or under construction in a number of countries around the world. XFELS are based on linear accelerator technology and are able to produce femtosecond pulses of X-rays that can be up to ten orders of magnitude brighter than the pulses from facilities such as the Australian Synchrotron. Professor Nugent reported the results of some of the first experiments which use XFELS for X-ray coherent diffraction imaging and progress towards the important goal of imaging single biomolecules.

This lecture was the 13th in the series of biennial lectures to commemorate the life and work of Dr Lloyd Rees FAA, foundation Chief of the CSIRO Section (later Division) of Chemical Physics from 1947 to 1978. The Rees Lectures are presented by scientists who have made distinguished contributions to chemical physics in Australia.