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THE ELECTRONIC ALADDIN NEWSLETTER NO. 21

February/March/April 1999

1. ELECTRON INTERFEROMETERS WITH ATOMIC PRECISION

Artificial solids with tailored electronic properties have been a long-term dream. With the skills in manipulating surfaces acquired over the last two decades, scientists are getting closer to this goal. Jens Paggel, Tom Miller, and Tai Chiang (U. Illinois Urbana) are pushing the frontier all the way to the atomic limit. They fabricate miniature electron interferometers consisting of an atomically-smooth silver film on a single crystal iron whisker. Synchrotron radiation from the SRC is focused onto the tiny, but perfect whisker and reveals how the electron waves are modified in these small structures. The fast-oscillating wave of a free electron becomes modulated by an envelope wave function with longer wavelength. Instead of a continuum, sharp peaks appear in the electron spectrum. For details, see J.J. Paggel, T. Miller, T.-C. Chiang, Science 283, 1709 (1999). For a perspective, see F.J. Himpsel, Science 283, 1655 (1999).

2. CANADIAN SYNCHROTRON LIGHT SOURCE FUNDED

The Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) has approved a C$ 56.4 M contribution to build the Canadian Light Source (CLS) in Saskatoon. The decision gives the green light to the C$ 173.5 million national facility, the largest scientific project ever to be built in Canada. The state-of-the-art facility is expected to begin operation in 2003 and be fully operational in 2008. Congratulations to our Canadian colleagues, who have contributed significantly to the SRC and currently represent 16 % of the SRC users.

3. 1999 SRC WORKSHOP ON LOW-DIMENSIONAL SYSTEMS

After a poll among the users it was decided to have Low-Dimensional Systems as the main theme of the SRC Workshop on Saturday Oct. 9, 1999. Let Franz Himpsel (himpsel@comb.physics.wisc.edu) know about suggestions for specific speakers and topics. In addition to the technical part, several tutorials are planned, both on the topic of the workshop and on synchrotron radiation research as a whole.

4. HONORS FOR SRC RESEARCHERS

  • Mike Bancroft, received the Hellmuth Prize of the University of Western Ontario. It recognizes research achievement of a substantial body of career work.

  • Tom Miller (U. Illinois Urbana) was promoted to Research Associate Professor.

  • Hong Ding (U. Illinois Chicago, now Boston College) won a Sloan Research Fellowship for his work on high temperature superconductors and correlated electrons.

  • Gelsomina "pupa" De Stasio accepted a Full Professorship in the Physics Department of the UW-Madison.

... and some awards in 1998 that did not appear in this column yet:

  • Franco Cerrina (UW-Madison and CXrL) won the Aristotle Award of the Semiconductor Research Corporation (the other SRC) which acknowledges outstanding teaching in its broadest sense.

  • Tom Kuech (UW-Madison) became Fellow of the American Physical Society.

  • Al Arko, John Joyce, and Kevin Graham (LANL), were named recipients of the Los Alamos Distinguished Performance Award.

 

Congratulations to everyone!