It takes a village — especially when working on high level research.
Researchers from LSU and Lund University in Sweden collaborated to find a new method for using strong laser pulses to direct short bursts of x-ray light.
Department of Physics and Astronomy professor and lead researcher Kenneth Schafer, Department Physics and Astronomy professor Mette Gaarde and graduate student Seth Camp worked together to understand the theory behind this new method in directing and controlling x-ray light discovered by Lund University.
“[Lund University] came to us with some data they didn’t really understand, but which showed that they could control the direction the x-rays were going in,” Schafer said. “They designed what is like a switch that they could use the strong laser to turn on. The x-rays were going [one] way, and they could turn on the strong laser and it would make them go [another] way. The question is why? So that’s where we got involved.”
Gaarde said with this new method, they can control where the x-ray light goes, as well as how long it lasts. When the laser’s light is turned on, it manipulates the direction of the short bursts of x-ray light. When the laser is turned off, it controls how long the x-ray pulse will last.
Camp designed the calculations to correlate with Lund University’s experiments. Camp said this new method will have different uses depending on whether researchers and groups look at it from an experimental viewpoint or with theory in mind. Lund University focuses more on the experimental viewpoint, while LSU focuses more on theory, he said.
“We theorists in exploring atomic physics think we have a unique use for it as well because it makes use of resonances,” Camp said. “Normally when we study these resonances, we have to study them on a background of x-rays. Now, because we can choose to send off light, we can send off this resident light and separate it from the background. It’s background free at this point. You can get direct access to the light generated from these atomic resonances rather than having to study them indirectly.”
Gaarde said working with experimentalists is exciting, as the University concentrates on theory.
“We have slightly different expertise, although from the outside it really all looks the same,” Gaarde said. “All of this has come together to make this kind of large scale comparison of what they can measure in the experiment and what we can calculate. The calculations and simulations really help us to understand how it works.”
Just like LSU, Lund University had several professors and a graduate student working on the experimental aspect of this method. Schafer said most of the time with high level research, there’s usually several people, and many other institutions or universities working together for a discovery. Schafer calls it a “giant spider web” of people collaborating on research.
“You need as much expertise as you can bring together, especially in our field, studying ultra-fast light,” Schafer said. “There’s really the expectation that you’ll bring together theory and experiment. It’s really hard for a university to support big programs in both theory and experiment.”