NOTICE: The project that is the subject of this report was approved by the Governing Board of the National Research Council, whose members are drawn from the councils of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine. The members of the committee responsible for the report were chosen for their special competences and with regard for appropriate balance.

This project was supported by the Department of Energy under Award No. DE-FG02-04ER15610; NAS and the National Science Foundation under Award No. PHY-0443243. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the sponsors.

Cover: Upper left, Simulation of X-ray diffraction pattern of anthrax from the Linear Coherent Light Source (courtesy of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory). Upper right, Time-of-flight images showing a fermionic condensate (courtesy of JILA/University of Colorado). Below, Extreme ultraviolet (EUV) interferograms created by laserlike (or coherent) beams of short wavelength light centered at photon energies of 45 eV and diffracted by pinhole pairs at separations of 150 µm (left) and 250 µm (right) (courtesy of JILA/University of Colorado).