Steve Bennett

Tarnjit Johal has joined Physics college to work with John Purton in supporting station 5U1, and to contribute to the research programme of the Magnetic Scattering Group led by Gerrit van der Laan. Tarnjit joins after post-doc positions in the UK and abroad in a number of areas of surface science. John is now port co-ordinator for 5U replacing Mark Roper with Allan Porter training as his deputy. Ian Maxwell and Rod Birchall will carry out the corresponding deputising roles for ports 3 and 5D respectively.

Sunil Patel has moved from station 1.1 to the MPW station 6.1 to work with Nigel Poolton. Sunil is part of a developing collaboration on bio-material surfaces. He also continues as Physics lab supervisor.

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Gerrit van der Laan, Physics College Science Chair

"What's a Physics College?" I hear you say. Pointless to have these names if they aren't properly defined, so I have a try with Webster's unabridged at hand. Among the definitions I find: Physics is the science that deals with matter and energy and their interactions. A College is an organised group of persons having common interests or a common duty or role. That might not be the ultimate description, at least it offers a workable explanation.

Physics College, together with the other colleges, have been set up to bring together like minded people, to evaluate their needs regarding synchrotron radiation, to ease their access to the experimental stations, and to discuss priorities in cases where resources are limited.

Physics covers a broad area that penetrates deeply into other sciences. Often new fundamental discoveries are starting out in physics, then if they catch on become the territory of the chemist, the material scientist and the biologist. There is no hard boundary between these disciplines and in fact that is fortunate since synchrotron radiation research is multidisciplinary. Nowadays, we are spoiled for choice with all this physics that one can do on a synchrotron. Therefore, we are concentrating on the most successful and promising areas and those having the highest user demand. Internationally competitive programmes are running in the areas of magnetism, surface science, and atomic and molecular science.

On request of the user community and at moderate costs we have decided to upgrade line 5U.1 to a helical undulator providing variable polarization (circular as well as horizontal and vertical linear polarization) in the soft x-rays region. This will open up opportunities in many new areas where polarized photon transitions can provide more information using dichroism and chirality. The ESRF is highly over subscribed so it also comes as a welcome relief from their side.

Physics College looks for strong interactions with university and institute groups and welcomes any suggestions for improvements, new experimental set-ups and we are happy to discuss your needs for synchrotron radiation for now and in the future. We have strong links with theory groups and can suggest you further ways to complement your experimental results.