Expert Interview: Dimitri Argyriou

[00:00:00] John German: Hi everyone. This is John German with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Strategic Communications Team. I’m here today with Dmitri Argyriou, director of Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source and interim director of the Advanced Light Source Upgrade project. 

Dimitri, thank you for taking the time to talk with us about the ALS. 

[00:00:27] Dimitri Argyriou: Really happy to be here with you, John. 

[00:00:29] John: For those of us who are unfamiliar with the Advanced Light Source, what is it and what does it do?

[00:00:33] Dimitri: So let me start with this analogy. If you see the world around us, the reason that we can see it is because of light. So light bounces off the surface of things. It gets collected in our eyes. Our eyes are light sensitive. It generates a signal. Our brain processes that signal to an image. And voila, we can see the world around us. Now ALS works in a similar kind of way, but it uses a very different approach.

We want to see the world of atoms and electrons, and in order to do that, we need to have light at a wavelength that is comparable to the size of atoms, and to the distance between them. So what we do is, we illuminate things with X-ray light.  We collect the signal that comes off the things that we’re interested in. The signal goes into what we call detectors. We create signals. We use computers to process that signal. And then we can actually see atoms and we can see the charge and the electrons around them. And that’s an incredibly useful thing because we can actually see physics and chemistry at the atomic scale live as it happens. And that is incredibly important for making progress on a whole bunch of societal challenges that we face.

So how does ALS do that? Well, you can’t just get X-ray light, uh, you know, out of thin air. So what we do is we use electron accelerators, spinning electrons around in a circle at just about the speed of light. And when you do that, you can generate X-ray light at exactly the wavelengths that match the dimensions of the size of atoms or the distance between atoms.

The light generated by ALS is a million times brighter than the sun, but on a very, very small spot, of course. And these are the parameters that we need to be able to actually do the experiments and do the research that we do using the ALS. 

[00:02:30] John: So the ALS, which has a number of beamlines, and as a user facility supports scientists from around the world and here at the Lab. What are some examples of the types of research ALS makes possible?

[00:02:42] Dimitri: The breadth of science is really impressive. For example, we have examined samples that have returned from space missions. And you know, a recent example of that is looking at material that was returned to Earth by the NASA OSIRIS-REx Project from the Bennu asteroid. So looking at the samples here on our beamlines actually gives us insights of how the solar system was created and the early state of our solar system. 

We use our beamlines to understand quantum materials and high temperature superconductors. And what’s important there is to understand the secret life of electrons, that the wonderful properties of superconductors and quantum materials stem from the particular electronic states that these materials possess. We want to exactly see what these electrons do, and ALS gives us an eye witness view of the quantum world in these materials. 

The ALS has been used to study atmospheric chemistry, watch catalysis in action, and also the molecules of life, how proteins work, and also how we can manipulate them  and how we can design new ones. And actually, this has led to two Nobel prizes.

And finally, just to close the loop on how broad the area of science that we do is, the Center for X-ray Optics has been using ALS for many years to develop EUV lithography, which is now the lithography that you want to use in microchips that we’re using in high-end applications like cell phones and communications.

So, ALS touches a lot of science, has been incredibly impactful for the last 30 years. And what we do now is basically making sure that it continues to be impactful for another 30 years. 

[00:04:23] John: Great so the ALS is in the midst of a historic modernization project called the ALS-U or ALS Upgrade project. What does that involve? And, what can we expect, Dimitri? 

[00:04:33] Dimitri: It is really key because it’s about guaranteeing that scientific prominence for another 30 years. What we’re doing with ALS-U is taking our old storage ring. We call it a storage ring because it stores electrons, which we accelerate around in a circle to generate light, and essentially replacing it with two new ones. I won’t get into the technicalities of why you need two, but that is the key part of the project is to use a very new accelerator system. And the advantage of that is that it will generate light that is at least two orders of magnitude brighter than what we have now, but also light that is fully coherent.

So to do that, it means that you need some really high-end technology, accelerating systems, high-end magnets. Most of the money that we’re spending is actually designing and acquiring these magnets. But the changeover is very, very challenging because, if you’ve ever been to ALS in Building 6, you’ll see it’s a highly constrained environment. It’s not easy to get into the building, it’s not easy to get stuff out of the building. So we are gonna have to not only build these new accelerators and, and pre-stage them outside of ALS. Then we have to go in, remove the old storage ring, clean the space up, and then install these new systems. One system we’re doing right now and we, that, that basically is, hanging on a wall inside the accelerator tunnel.

The second system is the big one, and that’s what’s gonna take us a lot of time, but we’re making good and steady progress. 

[00:06:06] John: And why is it important that the Lab succeed at building a newer and better ALS? 

[00:06:10] Dimitri: So if you look at the science of the Lab and what the Lab has been prominent at for the last 30 years, ALS has actually been part of that success story. It has been providing those high-end beam lines that are really working at the forefront of X-ray science, but also that allow LBNL scientists and Berkeley scientists to also work at that forefront. So it is an incredible part of our scientific life. As many of my colleagues point out, the ALS is in the Lab  logo. So it is important for our scientific future. 

It will provide us with new capabilities, as I alluded to already. That hundred times brightness increase is going to enable a lot of experiments that may be challenging today. Those experiments are going to become routine tomorrow. And of course what we’re interested is not only the routine stuff, but the next challenging experiments. And the thing that we’re most excited about is that ALS will produce coherent light. Why is that important? Well, you can actually use that coherence as a crib to break the code of a lot of structures that you find in the world, in nature. So that is important. The other thing that is important is that we now know that we can start manipulating coherence and light itself and give it properties that otherwise it wouldn’t have. So we can manipulate light in a way that we can give it quantum properties and the minute now that you do that, then you have a true quantum beam. Which means that you can start interrogating materials in life and the world around us at the quantum level itself, and that is extremely exciting.

There are not many places in the world that will be able to do that type of science. ALS is going to be really uniquely placed to actually explore those frontiers, but what excites us is that we will have new frontiers, and with every machine and new technology that of course, you, you put together, it’s also the frontiers that you haven’t thought about. So we are incredibly excited about the new capabilities. We already have some frontiers we want to explore, but I’m sure there are going to be many others that we’re going to find along that journey. What’s important right now is to focus on the upgrade project and get that done so we can get to the nice, fun stuff afterwards.

[00:08:28] John: Wow. Exciting progress at the Advanced Life Source. Dmitri, thank you for taking the time to share this with us. 

[00:08:34] Dimitri: Thanks for making that time available. 

[00:08:36] John: To learn more about Berkeley Labs Advanced Light Source, visit als.lbl.gov. This is John German with the Strategic Communications team at Berkeley Lab.