What sets LUX apart from any of the approximately 40 other light sources in the world today?
LUX would be refined for the needs of ultrafast science, merging accelerator-based x-ray production with ultrafast lasers for exquisite time and spatial resolution. The primary component of the proposed LUX facility would be a 3 GeV recirculating superconducting linear accelerator. It would feature three recirculating rings, multiple, independently tunable beamlines, and experimental end-stations that would be coupled to lasers. The recirculating configuration would provide an electron bunch repetition rate that is well-suited to pump-probe dynamics experiments. LUX will produce coherent ultra-short pulses of soft x-rays that will have a peak flux several orders of magnitude higher than any existing storage ring light source. These pulses will also offer both a timing synchronization to excitation lasers and a spectroscopic tunability across the full range of EUV to hard x-ray wavelengths that aren’t available elsewhere. LUX will make it possible to do femtosecond x-ray diffraction, as
