From the Directors
Dear Colleagues,

At CHESS, the summer maintenance period ended in September and user operations have resumed at all beamlines. Since Cornell University is restricting visits to campus by individuals not part of the residential Cornell community through the fall semester, out-of-town users are not allowed to visit CHESS. Instead CHESS supports the user program via remote and mail-in capabilities.

The CHESS “Remote Access User Guide” with information about safety training, the remote access user interface, sample shipping, and how to REACH CHESS 24/7 for support during a beamtime is available on the CHESS web site.

During the online CHESS town hall on September 17th, CHESS staff demonstrated the new remote access capabilities to the approx. 120 users attending virtually.

Building on now several weeks of remote user operations experience, we continue to improve and expand remote access capabilities following the principle to provide essential support on site and do everything else remotely.

At this time, we are planning to continue operating all beamlines remotely during the January to March 2021 run cycle. We are now accepting beamtime proposals and beamtime requests (BTR) for this upcoming run at beamlines that are part of the Center for High Energy X-ray Sciences (CHEXS) at CHESS and MacCHESS. The deadline for new beamtime proposals is October 28th and beamtime requests (BTRs) are accepted until November 18th. Proposals can be submitted through the online CHESS User Portal.

CHESS is up and running and supporting user research again. In this newsletter, we feature recent quantum materials research at the NSF-supported CHEXS. Researchers at the QM2 beamline and the MagLab collaborated to understand a previously-overlooked charge-density-wave phase in UPt2Si2.

The CHESS response to the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrates the facility’s nimbleness and ability to innovate under challenging conditions. The facility staff and user community were asked to meet incredible challenges under extraordinarily difficult circumstances and they delivered.

Stay safe,
Joel Brock, Director, CHESS
Elke Arenholz, Associate Director, CHESS
CHESS Restarts for Remote Research
The Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source, CHESS, has reopened for researchers after a long shutdown due to CoVID-19. Users who typically travel from all over the world to perform research at CHESS are now able to study their samples by logging in remotely from their home institution.
X-rays uncover “hidden” quantum states
Quantum materials research involves manipulating and measuring the collective quantum states of electrons in materials. The NSF-funded user facilities at CHESS and the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory (aka the MagLab) have long been important resources in this pursuit.
Miller Group Research Featured in Metallurgial and Materials Transactions 50th Anniversary Collection
Metallurgical and Materials Transactions is one of the main international journals in the field of structural materials. The journal invited a set of papers for their 50th anniversary edition, including one from Matthew Miller's group.
New 3D virtual tours!
We've been collecting digital scans of our labs with a specialized camera takes high dynamic range (HDR) 360° panoramic imagery and depth data obtained via laser point clouds then combines them using a deep learning neural network AI. The result is a virtual space that you can "walk" through. Tours are now available of PIPOXS and the equipment platform.
Issue No. 76 • 2020.10.15
CHESS
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