Training, experiments, and facility visits across the U.S. and Europe — a record of my hands-on experience with large-scale scattering and spectroscopy facilities.
In October 2018, I worked with beamline scientists at HB-2A to perform variable-temperature neutron diffraction on a magnetic sample to determine its magnetic structure. The ferromagnetic nature of the material called for a more suitable technique, so we planned and executed a polarized neutron diffraction experiment in January 2019.
During a stop in Geneva, we took a day trip by train to the ESRF. We got to view the experimental setup at Beamline ID12, where they perform high-pressure X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy on elements normally considered impossible, thanks to a custom perforated diamond anvil cell. The mountains around the facility were very impressive, as were the plans to upgrade the synchrotron — the ESRF was preparing to close for at least a year to exchange hardware and build a newer ring with higher flux. A shame we were only there for a day.
During the same trip, we visited collaborators with offices at the European XFEL facility. The XFEL generates extremely bright, ultrashort X-ray flashes that enable experiments impossible at conventional synchrotrons — a fascinating glimpse at the frontier of scattering science.
My PI, a colleague, and I traveled to Hamburg, Germany to meet with collaborators and tour the DESY facility. It was a very different experience from the APS, which sits on the large and secluded Argonne campus. DESY is right in the middle of the city, with residences just blocks from the main gate. The electron beam at DESY also powers the X-Ray Free Electron Laser, which is technically located in a different suburb.
Three months after the NRS workshop, I worked with Sector 3 at the APS for an experiment on the beamline itself. We used a diamond-anvil cell with ethanol as the pressure medium to perform Nuclear Forward Scattering (the synchrotron equivalent of Mössbauer spectroscopy) on several europium-based compounds. The experiment was intense — three days of 24-hour monitoring between two people. The beamline equipment heats up and cools down on a very small scale based on the ground temperature beneath the building, which is enough to move the apparatus out of focus. I returned in November 2018 to complete the full range of compounds.
Attended this workshop at the APS designed to train users on the Coherent Nuclear Resonant Scattering by Single Crystals (CONUSS) software. Lectures were given by Dr. Wolfgang Sturhahn and other prominent inelastic scattering experts, with hands-on experience analyzing synchrotron Mössbauer data.
In 2017 I was selected along with 61 other graduate students to participate in this intensive two-week school. The first week was spent at the Advanced Photon Source (APS) at Argonne National Laboratory, and the second at both the High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR) and the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.