Symposium Location: Physical Sciences Building, room 401, Cornell University.
Electron accelerators are an indispensable tool for capturing the dynamics of matter on the atomic scale. Electron beams enable angstrom spatial resolution both in the venue of electron microscopy, wherein the electron beam is the probe itself, and in the venue of synchrotron light sources, wherein a high energy electron beam is used the generating medium for synchrotron radiation. Beyond just spatial resolution, high brightness laser-driven electron sources coupled with efficient acceleration techniques and brightness preserving transport has led to several new forms of high spatial resolution probes with sub-picosecond time resolution. This has unlocked the era of the “molecular movie”, wherein conformational changes in matter can be mapped on their intrinsic time scales. This symposium highlights several of these time-resolved atomic probes, particularly the X-ray free electron laser and ultrafast electron diffraction and microscopy. The role of the underlying accelerator technologies in both current and future time-resolved atomic dynamics experiments will be discussed.