University of Wisconsin-Madison

THE ELECTRONIC ALADDIN NEWSLETTER NO. 23

1. NEW SRC STAFF MEMBERS WELCOMED

Starting Oct. 1 the SRC has a new Associate Director for Accelerator Technology, Joseph Bisognano (see Newsletter No. 22). Also joining the SRC is Chris Moore as Outreach Coordinator and Troy Humphrey as a new operator. Welcome to everyone!

2. REPORT FROM THE SRC USERS MEETING AND WORKSHOP

The SRC Users Meeting on Oct. 8 featured the wide spectrum of activities being pursued at Aladdin, ranging from experiments to determine the abundance metals in the interstellar medium to the incorporation of gadolinium into brain tumor cells for treatment by neutron activation therapy.

The following day, the SRC Workshop on Low-dimensional Systems covered the latest developments in one particular area of interest to SRC Users. One of the most actively discussed questions was the separation of an electron into a spinon and a holon that has been predicted theoretically for a one-dimensional metal. Experiments are starting to find evidence for such an unusual effect. A new way of creating one-dimensional objects is just becoming feasible, where strings of atoms are produced at semiconductor surfaces by self-assembly.

Ben Gilbert is this year's winner of the Aladdin Lamp Award which recognizes excellence in synchrotron radiation research performed at the SRC in pursuit of a degree. He is being honored for his his work on spectromicroscopy of cells, studying the incorporation of boron and gadolinium compounds into brain tumor cells for subsequent neutron activation therapy. His work was done at the MEPHISTO photoelectron microscope, one of the premier instruments of this type in the world. His advisor is Gelsomina "pupa" De Stasio (EPFL Lausanne, Instituto di Struttura della Materia Rome, and now Physics Department of the UW-Madison).

The new Canadian SGM beam line was inaugurated by a delegation headed by Walter Davidson from the National Research Council. The work of the Canadian group at the SRC has been so successful that Canada is now building its own synchrotron light source. Beam lines, such as the SGM, will be tested at the SRC and are expected to move to the new storage ring in Saskatoon in 2003/2004.

3. SRC SUMMER SCHOOL PLANNED

For the summer of 2000 the SRC is planning to organize a summer school that exposes graduate and undergraduate students, as well as others new to synchrotron radiation, to the basic types of experiments at the SRC and the wide range of science that can be performed with the available instruments. As core program, we envisage infrared microscopy, near edge absorption spectroscopy, magnetic circular dichroism (MCD), and photoelectron spectroscopy. SRC is planning to assist with the students' travel expenses. Please send your ideas and comments about such a program to Franz Himpsel.

4. BEAM TIME SCHEDULING COMING UP

The review process for the last round of proposals has just been completed, such that Hartmut Hoechst will be able to make the beam time assignments. Please let him know of any changes from the requests indicated in the proposals..

5. ACKNOWLEDGMENT ALERT

This work is based upon research conducted at the Synchrotron Radiation Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison, which is supported by the NSF under Award No. DMR-9531009.

6. CONGRATULATIONS TO SRC RESEARCHERS

John Weaver (U. Minnesota) received the Medard W. Welch Award, one of the most prestigious awards of the American Vacuum Society "for his seminal contributions to the atomic-level understanding of thin film growth, interfacial interactions, and etching". John is one of the SRC pioneers and performed several of the accomplishments cited in his award at the SRC, such as interfacial phenomena in metal-semiconductor systems and the determination of the electronic structure of fullerenes from photoemission. John will give a seminar in Chemistry at the UW-Madison on November 18.

Hong Ding (Boston College) received a Sloan Research Fellowship. He is a recent recipient of the Aladdin Lamp Award (1996) for his thesis work on high temperature superconductors with Juan Carlos Campuzano.