December 5, 2007

NSLS-II Physicist Timur Shaftan Receives Tenure

NSLS-II physicist Timur Shaftan is one of six Brookhaven scientists granted tenure, effective August 1, 2007, by Brookhaven Science Associates. Shaftan won tenure for his outstanding research on electron beams in accelerators for synchrotron radiation and free-electron laser sources, and significant contributions to the development of the Deep Ultraviolet Free-Electron Laser (DUV-FEL) and the conceptual design report for NSLS-II.

Timur Shaftan

"Timur has made significant contributions to accelerator physics, particularly in developing synchrotron radiation and free-electron laser sources. He is widely recognized in the community as one of the top scientists of his generation in his area of research," said Chi-Chang Kao, NSLS Chair. "His broad knowledge and exceptional ability have had an important impact on accelerator projects at the Lab, and he is playing a critical role in developing accelerator systems for NSLS-II."

Shaftan received his Ph.D. in physics from the Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics, Novosbirsk, in 1997. His Ph.D. thesis was dedicated to experiments with a single electron in a storage ring. In 2000, he became a research associate at the NSLS, working at the Accelerator Test Facility, where he suggested and developed an interferometer that demonstrated the high temporal coherence of the High-Gain Harmonic Generation (HGHG) FEL output. He also developed an infrared detector, the Liquid Crystal Camera that has become of interest for industrial applications.

In 2001, he joined the NSLS, rising to physicist by 2004. As part of the DUV-FEL team, he played a key role in the successful generation of the saturated output from the HGHG FEL in 2003. He also designed experiments to characterize effects in high-brightness electron beams that he, with Zhirong Huang of Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, then showed to be caused by the longitudinal space charge. At DUV-FEL he also thought through a way, which he and BNL's Li-Hua Yu later proved experimentally, of making short-wavelength seeded FELs continuously tunable without tuning the wavelength of the seed laser. Currently, he leads the development of the NSLS-II injection system and has been a key contributor in many other areas of the NSLS-II project.

ARTICLE BY: Liz Seubert