Wiggler enhances SPEAR x‐ray intensity

The first synchrotron‐radiation beam emerging from the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory’s (SSRL) wiggler magnet was successfully steered into a newly completed experimental hall earlier this year, and it is now in regular operation during colliding‐beam runs at the SPEAR electron‐positron storage ring, in which the wiggler is installed. The wiggler shifts the synchrotron radiation spectrum emerging from SPEAR toward harder x rays and increases its overall intensity by about a factor of 6. Furthermore it makes a useful x‐ray flux available even when SPEAR operates at low energy $\text{(<2.5\hspace{0.17em}}\mathrm{GeV}\mathrm{),}$ as it does 80% of the time. According to SSRL deputy director Herman Winick, these increases in available flux and time should do much to reduce the backlog of experimenters waiting to use SSRL beams for x‐ray spectroscopy, biochemistry, crystallography and an increasing variety of other fields.