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Practicals, Labs, and Tutorials

Practicals, Labs, and Tutorials in Grenoble

All full-time participants carry out practicals1 on two different neutron spectrometers at Institut Laue Langevin (ILL) and on 2 to 4 different synchrotron beamlines at European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF). In addition, they participate to 3 or 4 tutorials2 at ILL, ESRF, and/or CNRS. Last, those who follow only 3 tutorials also participate to a lab3, taking place at ILL, LNCMI, Institut Néel, MEM, EMBL, or IBS, allowing them to discover an additional technique they are not used to. It can happen that one or two practicals, labs, or tutorials are proposed to part-time participants.

All practicals, labs, and tutorials last a half-day and are addressed to small groups of 4 to 6 participants. See a typical list of techniques in the last section.

    1 practicals = hands-on experiments at large scale facilities (neutron, synchrotron, FEL)
    2 tutorials = neutron and/or synchrotron radiation data treatment
    3 labs = hands-on experiments using labs apparatus (X-rays, NMR, microscope, ...)
 

Practicals and Tutorials OUTSIDE Grenoble

In addition, practicals are organised for the full-time participants, and eventually tutorials, on one site among our six partner facilities:
→ the Spanish synchrotron source ALBA near Barcelona,
→ the French synchrotron radiation facility SOLEIL near Paris,
→ the Italian synchrotron light source Elettra and Free Electron laser Radiation for Multidisciplinary Investigations (FERMI) in Trieste,
→ the German synchrotron radiation facility Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY) and the European XFEL in Hamburg,
→ the KIT Light Source in Karlsruhe
→ the Swiss synchrotron radiation facility Swiss Light Source (SLS) at the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) in Villigen.

The participants are again distributed in groups of four, for the practicals, and, depending on the partner site, these hands-on experiments last a half-day or an entire day.
 

DISTRIBUTION OF THE PRACTICALS, LABS, AND tutorials among the participants

About two months before the beginning of the school, the participants are asked to fill in a questionnaire asking for:

  • what experiments they have already performed at large scale facilities (on what instrument) and those they plan to do,
  • their research topic,
  • their wishes, through a rating of the various techniques that are proposed

Based on this information, the members of the organising committee in charge of the practicals organisation will allocate to the participants selected practicals, labs, and tutorials. The individual programmes for the practicals, labs, and tutorials, will be done in the best possible way (regarding the many constraints) with respect to their main research interests and wishes expressed. Each participant will follow about 14 half-days of practicals, labs, and tutorials, during the whole school.
All participants will be required to attend the entire practical / tutorial / lab program assigned to them during the Hercules school.

 

Typical list of practicals FOR THE A SESSION

(Neutron / X-ray) powder diffraction
(Neutron / X-ray) single crystal diffraction
(Neutron / X-ray) diffuse scattering
(Neutron / X-ray) surface diffraction / reflectivity
(Neutron / X-ray) small angle scattering
Neutron triple axis spectroscopy
Neutron time of flight spectroscopy
Neutron backscattering spectroscopy
Neutron spin-echo
X-ray absorption spectroscopy
X-ray emission spectroscopies
X-ray photoemission electron microscopy
X-ray angle resolved photoemission spectroscopy
X-ray photon correlation spectroscopy
Resonant Inelastic X-ray Scattering
X-ray Magnetic Circular Dichroism
X-ray scanning microscopy
X-ray coherent diffraction imaging
X-ray coherent diffraction
X-ray lithography
X-ray Infra-red spectroscopy
X-ray Time-resolved experiments
X-ray beam diagnostics 

 

    Typical list of practicals FOR THE B SESSION

    Neutron- reflectometry
    Neutron- small angle scattering (SANS)
    Neutron- macromolecular crystallography, Laue diffraction
    Neutron- dynamics, incoherent neutron scattering
    Neutron- spin echo spectroscopy (NSE)
    Synchrotron- tomography, laminography
    Synchrotron- absorption and phase contrast
    Synchrotron- soft X-ray microscopy (STXM)
    Synchrotron- infra-red spectroscopy and microscopy (FTIR)
    Synchrotron- X-ray lithography
    Synchrotron- Extended X-Ray Absorption Fine Structure (EXAFS)
    Synchrotron- protein crystallography
    Synchrotron- X-ray absorption spectroscopy
    Synchrotron- fluorescence spectroscopy
    XFEL (FERMI)- molecular dynamics investigated at the sulphur 2p edge
    XFEL (FERMI)- THz spectroscopy
    XFEL (Eu XFEL)- single shot spectral measurement
    XFEL (Eu XFEL)- nano-crystallization and jetting test
    Lab- crystallization of biological macromolecules
    Lab- model building and analysis in electron density maps
    Lab- Nuclear Magnetic Resonance
    Lab- Cryogenic Electron Microscopy
    Lab- optical spectroscopies (absorption, fluorescence and Raman)


Note that, depending on the Hercules session and on the visited partner facility, not all the techniques listed above are available.