Question: What is a beamline scientists? What would shining a light on a magnet actually do ?

Dan Porter answered on 5 Mar 2019: last edited 5 Mar 2019 8:26 am

Here at Diamond Light Source we have what’s called a synchrotron, which accelerates electrons to near the speed of light and generates intense beams of x-ray radiation. The synchrotron is a ring and these x-ray beams are produced at various points around the ring, with each point being called a beamline.

Eech beamline is different, having a different set up for different types of science – some for biology, some for chemistry, some for engineering and some, like mine, for physics and they all need lots of people to look after them – including scientists, engineers, technicians and programmers.

A beamline scientist is a professional scientists (having a degree, a PhD and several years of research experience) who looks after one of these beamlines – maintaining the equipment, developing techniques and helping scientists from universities all over the world perform experiments on the beamline, as well as carrying out a personal research program at the same time. It’s a great job with a lot of perks, but it can be very challenging as well.
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If you shine a light on a magnet, the photons, or tiny particles of light, will have a very, very, very small interaction with the magnet at the atomic level. With very careful experiments we can see this interaction and use it to understand how magnetic atoms talk to each other – it turns out they are a lot more complicated than they look!