The Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS), a directorate of SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, is an Office of Science User Facility operated for the U.S. Department of Energy by Stanford University. As the world's most powerful X-ray laser, the LCLS creates unique light that can see details down to the size of atoms and processes that occur in less than one tenth of a trillionth of a second. At these unprecedented speeds and scales, the LCLS is embarking on groundbreaking research in physics, structural biology, energy science, chemistry and many other diverse fields.

Proposals, safety training, user registration and user check-in are centralized to ensure prompt and efficient service to our users. A call for proposals will be solicited twice per year, and a successful proposal will be eligible to receive beam time about 9 months after being submitted.

LCLS exploits the free-electron laser (FEL) process, in which a pulse of high-energy electrons traveling through a very long periodic magnet structure creates x-rays and then coherently amplifies their intensity by many orders of magnitude. The SLAC linear accelerator is uniquely capable of producing the intense, high-energy electrons required to drive such an x-ray source.

LCLS is a unique x-ray source, very different from a conventional storage ring source. The FEL x-ray wavelength, intensity, and pulse duration can be tailored to meet the specific needs of each experiment and modified time in response to new discoveries.