Harnessing Quantum Light Science for Tabletop X-Ray Lasers, with Applications in Nanoscience and Nanotechnology

  • Speaker
  • Margaret Murnane, Ph.D.Distinguished Professor, Department of Physics and ECE, University of Colorado Boulder
Date & Time


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Ever since the invention of the laser more than 50 years ago, scientists have strived to create an X-ray laser. In the same way that visible lasers can concentrate light energy far better than a light bulb, a directed beam of X-rays would have many useful applications in medicine, security screening and the sciences. The X-ray sources currently in use, though, are in essence the same X-ray light bulb source that Wilhelm Röntgen used in 1895. That’s because until recently X-ray lasers required ridiculously high power levels.

Making a practical, tabletop-scale, X-ray laser source requires taking a different approach that transforms a beam of light from a visible femtosecond laser into a beam of directed X-rays. The story behind how this happened is surprising and beautiful, highlighting how powerful our ability is to manipulate nature at a quantum level.

Along the way, we also learned to generate the shortest strobe light in existence — fast enough to capture the fastest attosecond electron dynamics in materials.  We also learned how to achieve sub-wavelength spatial resolution at soft X-ray wavelengths for the first time. These new capabilities are already impacting nano and materials science, as well as showing promise for next-generation electronics, data and energy storage devices.

About the Speaker

Dr. Margaret Murnane is director of the U.S. National Science Foundation STROBE Science and Technology Center on functional nanoimaging, a fellow at JILA and a member of the Department of Physics and Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Colorado. She received her B.S and M.S. degrees from University College Cork, Ireland, and her Ph.D. in physics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1989. She runs a joint research group and a small laser company with her husband, professor Henry Kapteyn. Murnane’s research interests have been in ultrafast laser and X-ray science. She is the 2017 recipient of the Ives Medal/Quinn Prize of the Optical Society of America — the OSA’s highest honor.

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