With support from the NSF Division of Chemistry through the Mid-scale Research Infrastructure-1 program, a team led by Robert Baker at The Ohio State University (OSU) is implementing the NSF National EXtreme Ultrafast Science (NEXUS) Facility - a beyond-the-state-of-the-art national XUV light source to serve the scientific and engineering communities as an open-access user facility. This light source will be coupled to a versatile array of experimental capabilities, designed to facilitate transformative progress in areas of national priority with emphasis on energy conversion and quantum information science. This national facility brings new technology in high-power lasers to the US for the first time. This mid-scale infrastructure bridges the gap between tabletop instruments and large-scale facilities such as free electron lasers and synchrotrons. This facility also brings new capabilities to the broader community and contributes to US competitiveness in the global landscape. Upon completion, the facility will be available to researchers seeking new insights across chemistry, physics, materials science, and other disciplines.
At the heart of this facility is a new laser technology for producing extreme ultraviolet and soft x-ray photon energies at repetition rates of hundreds of kilohertz with average power exceeding one kilowatt. The combination of attosecond time resolution, high energies, and high repetition rates enables measurements that currently cannot be made with existing technology in a laboratory setting. The facility will provide the following experimental platforms with attosecond to femtosecond time resolution, depending on the experiment: 1) X-Ray Absorption/Reflection Spectroscopy, 2) X-Ray Magnetic Circular Dichroism, 3) Scanning Tunneling Microscopy, 4) Angle-Resolved Photoemission Spectroscopy, and 5) Laser-Induced Electron Diffraction. Applications include such scientific challenges as biomimetic photosynthesis and new quantum information technologies. Enabling these applications is the ability to control matter at the scale of individual electrons and atoms in systems that are far from equilibrium. This project directly responds to community-identified grand challenges requiring observation of charge and spin transport in relevant materials on the attosecond timescale with sub-nanometer spatial resolution.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
