South Korean scientists succeeded in obtaining flashes of X-ray light through X-ray free-electron lasers at the fourth-generation synchrotron radiation facility for the third time in the world behind the United States and Japan.

The Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning and Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH) said on Wednesday that the fourth-generation synchrotron accelerator that started a test run in April succeeded in producing flashes of X-ray light with a wavelength of 0.5 nanometers.

The X-ray free electron laser light is 100 million times brighter than the so-called third-generation light source X-ray flash, and it is small and coherent enough to allow scientists to examine the microstructure of a matter at nanoscale. Also, the bursts of light are very short - just hundreds of femtoseconds long, the time it takes for light to cross a human hair, allowing researchers record not only forms of matter but also functions.

The science ministry started to build the 429.8 billion won ($373 million) synchrotron accelerator with POSTECH, the nation’s leading technical academic institution on western coast of Korea, in 2011, and commenced a trial run of the X-ray free-electron laser on April this year.

The gigantic radiation-emitting system produces x-ray flashes by accelerating electrons at the speed of light. The X-ray free-electron light production requires very high level of technology as the margin of error should remain at only 0.005 nanometers for the movement of electrons and x-ray beams. The X-ray laser was first observed on June 14, and a team of experts officially confirmed that the facility functions properly on June 29.

Previously, Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) of the U.S. and Spring-8 Angstrom Compact free-electron Laser (SACLA) of Japan succeeded to produce flashes of X-ray light with their X-ray free-electron lasers. It took two years for the U.S. laboratory and four months for the Japanese team to obtain the new light source after they started test runs, while the Korean scientists only needed two months to get the same result.

The science ministry and POSTECH will demonstrate the X-ray free-electron laser to verify its performance in December.

By Lee Young-wook

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