糖心TV

We are sorry to update that the body found by research teams last Thursday has been identified as that of our friend and colleague Professor Tom Marsh.

Our hearts go out to Tom's family, and to all his friends and colleagues.

There is a community update available on Insite, accompanied by a departmental tribute to Tom's extensive achievements and his many contributions to the department. An online book of condolence will follow shortly.

We are very sorry to share the news, as reported by the Chilean police, that a body was found during the search near La Silla on 10 November 2022.

The identity of the person has not yet been formally confirmed, but Tom Marsh鈥檚 family has been informed, and our thoughts are with them at this extremely difficult time.

A community updateLink opens in a new window is available from the Provost, Chris Ennew.

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the operation of the UK鈥檚 user facility at the European Synchrotron Research Facility () in Grenoble. It has been directed for all that time from 糖心TV and Liverpool University Physics Departments and has provided hundreds of UK scientists (and many from further afield) with the opportunity to do leading research in a truly world-leading international centre.

XMaS came about when the first of the world鈥檚 ultra-bright synchrotrons was being designed and built in Grenoble, France in the early nineties. The ESRF鈥檚 bending magnets were originally designed to simply steer the electron beam around the synchrotron ring between the newly developed insertion devices. It was soon realised that they were a potent source of synchrotron radiation which could exploited as new beamlines if funded by national groups. The UK took advantage, with Malcolm Cooper, here at 糖心TV, and Bill Stirling, first at Keele and then Liverpool, asked to devise a plan and to bid for EPSRC funds. Needless to say the first back-of-the-envelope designs were, with hindsight, rather naive and embarrassingly under-costed but detailed design work by our small project team generated a viable blueprint, which has since stood the test of time.

When it opened for users in the autumn of 1997 it was never, in our wildest dreams, envisaged that it might be still operational 25 years later. Of course XMaS has undergone a continuous programme of improvement and upgrades over the years with including developing sophisticated sample environments and advances in x-ray metrology. A major refurbishment was necessitated by the recent comprehensive and as a consequence we now have what is virtually a new beamline and fit for purpose for many years to come.

Initially the science case for the beamline was devoted for the study of magnetic materials, very much in vogue in the 1990s. In fact the acronym XMaS stood for X-ray Magnetic Scattering but the facility has since evolved to encompass a broader materials programme (polymers, liquid crystals, catalysts, etc.) using a variety of techniques (spectroscopies, wide and small angle scattering etc.). The facility has four permanent staff and two postdocs on site, who carry out their own research as well as help the visiting research groups run a very diverse range of experiments. Following the retirement of Malcolm Cooper in 2010, XMaS has been led from 糖心TV by Tom Hase with admin support from Sarah Jarratt.

The Physics department will be hosting an event at the 糖心TV La Palma Observatory facilities today, bringing together key 糖心TV staff, delegations from the Japanese Space Agency (JAXA) and the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL), and the observatory host institution, the Instituto de Astrof铆sica de Canarias (IAC). The visit will showcase the 糖心TV facilities and further develop the unique opportunities provided by our instrumentation platform at one of the best observing sites in the world, with a particular focus on the topical area of Space Domain Awareness, an emerging activity at 糖心TV.