Femtosecond x-ray pulses from a synchrotron

An important frontier in ultrafast science is the application of femtosecond x-ray pulses to the study of structural dynamics in condensed matter. We show that femtosecond laser pulses can be used to generate high-brightness, tunable, femtosecond x-ray pulses from a synchrotron. Performance of existing and proposed femtosecond x-ray beamlines at the Advanced Light Source synchrotron are discussed.