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August 2-7, 2009
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

  
 
 
 

 
 
Topics

A list of specific areas of interest for the Sagamore XVI conference is listed below.

Charge densities
The charge density field is developing rapidly as a result of experimental and theoretical advances.  The interpretation of chemical bonding and the understanding of intermolecular interactions continue to be the subject of extensive discussion, not only for small molecules, but also for metallo-organic complexes and biological macromolecules.  Key aspects of the developments are to be covered in the conference. 

Spin densities and related phenomena: Neutron scattering studies of magnetic systems.  
Thermal and cold neutrons are a powerful probe of spin order and magnetic exchange coupling in both bulk materials and in thin films and multilayers.  With the imminent operation of the Spallation Neutron Source at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, neutron scattering studies will be a timely subject as by 2009. Areas that may be covered are inelastic and elastic scattering studies of materials with polarized beam techniques, neutron reflectometry and other methods.  Potential topics include spin densities, spin waves and spin lifetime studies, dynamic spin fluctuations in actinide and other materials, spin density wave phenomena, excitations in confined geometries, depth dependent phenomena, and spin coupling. 

Momentum densities
As evident at Sagamore XV great strides have been made in the studies of momentum densities by Compton and magnetic Compton scattering.  Data of unprecedented quality are now produced at beamlines at ESRF, Spring-8 and elsewhere. Undoubtedly exciting new results will become available during the coming three years.  This is one of the founding areas of the Sagamore conferences, which is to be fully covered.

The interaction between theory and experiment
One of the significant developments of the Sagamore conferences has been the increased attendance of theoreticians and the resulting strong interplay between theoretical and experimental results.  This is a key aspect of the conference that very much adds to the spirit of the meeting.  It will be promoted as much as feasible.

Time-resolved studies
One of the important frontier areas included for the first time in this conference is the study of microsecond and sub-microsecond time-resolved processes, their electronic nature and importance for solar-energy capture, chemical reactivity and understanding of physiological processes.

Electronic structure of nanoparticles
Nanoscale materials such as nano-particles can show significant difference in structure as well as in the chemical and physical properties. The electronic charge densities as well as magnetic behavior in the nanoscale materials are strongly dominated by the surface properties. The surface affinity towards various ligands of biological interest will play a crucial role in the development of exciting applications like targeted drug delivery systems.  Although the usual crystallographic methods of determining charge and/or spin densities are generally not applicable to this new class of materials, the systems offer unprecedented opportunities for testing fundamental theoretical models and developing an improved understanding and treatment of electron correlations and related issues.
The advent of new coherent micro beam sources of x-rays will offer new and challenging opportunities to determine the structure of nano-particles and macromolecules. Coherent x-ray scattering can provide the tools to determine structural information not provided by conventional techniques. In this vein, femtosecond spectroscopy will offer ability to access excited states of nano-systems directly.