The new Brazilian synchrotron light source continues its successful commissioning
On Saturday, December 14th, CNPEM’s team stored electrons in Sirius’s storage ring for several hours. This is a prerequisite for producing synchrotron light, and it happens only a few weeks after the first electron loop around the main accelerator was achieved.
In addition, on Monday, December 16th, with the connection of the accelerator to one of the beamlines set up for testing, it was possible to receive the first X-ray pulse, still discrete due to the small number of circulating electrons.
The achievement came after an intense and thorough work of adjusting hundreds of equipment parameters, another very important milestone in the Sirius commissioning process. The team is now dedicated to achieving higher and higher currents needed to produce synchrotron light of enough intensity for the first scientific experiments.
Sirius is the largest and most complex scientific infrastructure ever built in Brazil and one of the first 4th generation synchrotron light source to be built in the world and it was designed to put Brazil at the forefront of this type of technology.