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jan11-foreward-en.pdf

Synchrotron light was observed for the first time at a General Electric accelerator in 1947, during an era when physics research was pushing electron accelerators to higher and higher energies.  The high energy physics community continues to this day to expand the limits of particle accelerators to extreme energies, revealing exciting new science.  Another branch of physics research took the path of optimizing electron storage rings to increase the brilliance of the beam of photons, i.e. its luminous intensity per unit area.  That field is also advancing, with many new synchrotrons starting up operations in the last decade, and some high-profile projects under development (e.g. NSLS-II at Brookhaven National Labs).  Increasingly, synchrotron facilities support a very wide base of users, from almost all domains of science.  But physics, itself increasingly interdisciplinary, remains very well represented in many of these areas.

Now that Canada has its own national synchrotron facility, new physics research “shines” in Saskatoon.  This issue of Physics in Canada showcases four recent examples of successful programs that are underway at the Canadian Light Source. 

High energy photons can easily penetrate through solids, and can be focused down to spot sizes of a micron or even smaller.  Serge Desgreniers (U. Ottawa) and Chang-Yong Kim (CLS) describe how such beams can be used to probe the physics of materials at very high pressures inside diamond anvil cells.

Soft x-ray beams can be focussed down to even smaller sizes (10s of nanometers) using the nanoscale equivalent of Fresnel lenses (something every physics student has studied).  Adam Hitchcock (McMaster U) et al show how this, combined with the ability of elliptically polarized undulators to create circularly polarized beams, can be use to study nanomagnetism. 

Synchrotrons also produce beams of light in the infrared.  Bob McKellar (NRC) and co-authors show how synchrotron-based spectroscopy experiments are directly linked to new large-scale science projects in the areas of astrophysics and atmospheric sciences. 

And physicists continue to learn about particle accelerators.  Brant Billinghurst and Jack Bergstrom (CLS) discuss advances in research aimed at understanding how storage rings produce coherent synchrotron radiation, a powerful source of THz light.

Lastly, an overview article provides some basic information about the CLS and its current status.  While research at the CLS has already reached a high level of activity (more than 1000 users have done research at the CLS, resulting in over 300 publications in refereed journals), the facility is very welcoming to new users.  Please read on to find out more.

Thomas Ellis
Director of Research
Canadian Light Source
thomas [dot] ellis [at] lightsource [dot] ca

NOTE FROM THE EDITOR (B. Joós) : After introducing us to the Canadian Light Source (CLS) and its activities, this issue presents two classes of engineered materials and a bibliometric study of the impact of Ernest Rutherford’s work. The magnetic materials used for storing data in computer hard drives are discussed first by Martin Plumer (Memorial) and two industrial researchers from Western Digital Corporation (J. van Ek and W.C. Cain). These have experienced phenomenal growth in memory density comparable to the increase in the density of transistors in computer chips (famously characterized by Moore’s Law). The focus in the second class of engineered materials, the metamaterials, has been mainly on those with a negative refractive index. Marek Wartak (Wilfrid Laurier) and his colleagues at Imperial College, London, describe their unusual optical properties. Finally to start the 2011 celebrations of the centenary of Rutherford’s model of the nucleus, or the birth of nuclear physics, David Lockwood (NRC) and colleagues from the Max Planck Institute in Stuttgart (W. Marx and M. Cardona) show that the number of citations is not an accurate way to measure the impact of scientists of the stature of Rutherford, other metrics are required which they discuss.