We are developing cryogenic bolometers to measure the total energy of the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) free electron X-ray laser that is currently being built at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. LCLS will produce ultrashort {approx}200 fs X-ray laser pulses with {approx}10{sup 13} photons at 0.8 keV up to {approx}10{sup 12} photons at 8 keV per pulse at a repeat interval as short as 8 ms, and will be accompanied by a halo of spontaneous undulator radiation. Our bolometer consists of a 375 {micro}m thick Si absorber and a Nd{sub 0.67}Sr{sub 0.33}MnO{sub 3} sensor operated at its metal-insulator transition. It will measure the total energy of each pulse with a precision of <1%, and is designed to meet the conflicting requirements of radiation hardness, sensitivity, linearity over a dynamic range of three orders of magnitude, and readout speed compatible with the LCLS pulse rate. Here we discuss bolometer design and fabrication, and the photoresponse of prototype devices to pulsed optical lasers.

We report re-optimization of a recently proposed long-range corrected (LC) hybrid density functionals [J.-D. Chai and M. Head-Gordon, J. Chem. Phys. 128, 084106 (2008)] to include empirical atom-atom dispersion corrections. The resulting functional, {omega}B97X-D yields satisfactory accuracy for thermochemistry, kinetics, and non-covalent interactions. Tests show that for non-covalent systems, {omega}B97X-D shows slight improvement over other empirical dispersion-corrected density functionals, while for covalent systems and kinetics, it performs noticeably better. Relative to our previous functionals, such as {omega}B97X, the new functional is significantly superior for non-bonded interactions, and very similar in performance for bonded interactions.

Under the auspices of this funding, we have developed a program to synthesize and characterize highly monodispersed magnetic nanoparticles. We have been particularly interested in the origin of the exchange bias effect, which occurs in compound nanoparticles with a ferromagnetic core and an antiferromagnetic shell, and have mostly focused on Co/CoO core-shell nanoparticles. The exchange bias effect involves exchange coupling between the core moment and the antiferromagnetic shell which stabilizes the core moment, which would otherwise be quickly reorienting in ferromagnetic particles of this size.