AMOP Seminar

Dr. Cris Barnes, Los Alamos National Laboratory

"The Revolutionary Opportunities of MaRIE (the Matter-Radiation Interactions in Extremes Project)"

4:00pm, RLM 11.204

Abstract: "We are all engaged in the grand journey of making history, creating innovation that changes our life and the world." What does it take to identify and exploit a revolutionary opportunity? I will speak to an example, the Matter-Radiation Interactions in Extremes Project. MaRIE is a $2B–$3Billion project just beginning, intending to build the world’s highest-x-ray-energy free-electron laser with very flexible pulse timing and multiple other simultaneous probes and diagnostics First I’ll describe the scientific community consensus on the frontier, the grand challenge, of mesoscale materials. Next, I’ll describe the mission need for an experimental facility to address the capability gap that exists for mesoscale materials for national security missions. Science consensus, then sponsor support – only then do we talk about technical approach. That leads to the challenges of providing for this capability, where I will describe a little about x-ray production and free-electron lasers and linear accelerators and other areas of critical technology such as detectors and x-ray optics. All need innovative ideas, design, and implementation to be successful.