Tag: upgrade

Argonne celebrates successful completion of the APS Upgrade

Argonne celebrates successful completion of the APS Upgrade

The U.S. Department of Energy has granted its final approval to the project, bringing the decade-plus-long effort to a close

The upgraded APS is now the brightest synchrotron X-ray light source in the world, and extraordinary new scientific experiments are underway.

The comprehensive upgrade of the Advanced Photon Source (APS) is officially completed.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has given its final approval to the APS Upgrade Project, an $815 million effort to transform the APS into the brightest synchrotron X-ray facility in the world. The effort has taken more than a decade to plan and complete and has resulted in a facility with unprecedented capabilities for scientific discovery. The APS is a DOE Office of Science user facility at DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory.

The upgraded APS now generates X-ray beams that are up to 500 times brighter than before and sports nine new experiment stations (called beamlines) built to take full advantage of those enhanced beams. Scientists have been using the revamped facility for more than a year, exploring its new capabilities for research into more durable materials (for airplane turbines and other high-stress uses), longer-lasting batteries (for laptops and cell phones) and microelectronics (for our device-driven modern lives).

Read more on the Argonne website

Image: Advanced Photon Source

Credit: Argonne National Laboratory

Agreement to secure the funding for the ALBA Synchrotron upgrade

Agreement to secure the funding for the ALBA Synchrotron upgrade

The budget approved by the Spanish Government and the Generalitat de Catalunya for the next 14 years is €926.2 million, funded 50% by each government, and including investments, operations and personnel. €170 million (18%) are devoted entirely to the ALBA II upgrade project. This new investment takes advantage of almost all of the previous investment in ALBA and increases its economic and societal return. The cost-benefit analysis has shown that each euro invested in ALBA II generates an annual social return of 1.5 euros.

The event has been presided over by the President of the Generalitat de Catalunya, Salvador Illa; the Minister of Science, Innovation and Universities, Diana Morant; the Catalan Minister for Research and Universities, Núria Montserrat; the Secretary of State of Science, Innovation and Universities, Juan Cruz Cigudosa; and the Director of the ALBA Synchrotron, Caterina Biscari. There were also attending the Delegate of the Spanish government in Catalonia, Carlos Prieto, the Mayor of Cerdanyola del Vallès, Carlos Cordon, and the Rector of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Javier Lafuente.

The event was streamed live and can be rewatched via this link.

Before signing the agreement, the delegation made a tour around ALBA. The director, Caterina Biscari, guided the group through the upcoming changes under the ALBA II project, highlighting its impact on the resolution, speed, and detection capabilities of synchrotron light-based experiments.

Read more on ALBA website

SLS 2.0: How to start up a particle accelerator

SLS 2.0: How to start up a particle accelerator

The upgrade of the Swiss Light Source SLS, one of the large research facilities of the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI, is moving ahead: the electrons are back now in the completely new electron storage ring. A report from the SLS control room.

To switch on a large machine, just pressing a button is usually not enough. And the Swiss Light Source SLS is quite a remarkable machine: an accelerator-based large research facility that will soon resume producing high-intensity X-ray light for around 20 experiment stations at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI. Thanks to the SLS 2.0 upgrade and a significantly slimmer electron beam, this light will be many times brighter and thus will enable better research than ever before. Now it is the beginning of 2025, and the facility is being awakened from its 15-month sleep. Step by carefully considered step.

“We tested the linear accelerator and the booster before Christmas and got them running again fairly quickly, which was encouraging,” says Jonas Kallestrup. He is an accelerator physicist who did his PhD at SLS, then worked at the Diamond Light Source in the United Kingdom for a few years and is now back at PSI since 2022. His main responsibility here is for the booster he mentioned: after the linear accelerator, this is the part of SLS that brings the electrons up to nearly the speed of light. From there they have to be brought into the electron storage ring. And from here, it gets exciting.

That’s because the electron storage ring, with a circumference of 288 metres, is brand new. As part of the SLS 2.0 upgrade project, it was replaced starting in October 2023. This means: a new vacuum tube within which the electrons can speed around almost undisturbed; a new, sophisticated arrangement of around 1,000 high-performance magnets along the ring, surrounding the vacuum tube to keep the electrons on their precise course; and new associated pipes and tubes, cooling systems, vacuum pumps, and a total of around 500 kilometres of cables to connect everything.

A landscape of number columns and diagrams

Kallestrup is part of the commissioning team, which these days is working with great concentration in the PSI control room in the building next to the SLS. Five to ten people typically sit here, some of whom were already part of the team when SLS was first commissioned in 2001. Eighteen large computer screens, each with a dozen application windows, are set up in a semicircle. Together they show a neatly arranged landscape of number columns and diagrams, enabling the team to keep an eye on the relevant parameters of SLS.

Masamitsu Aiba wrote his master’s thesis on particle accelerators 25 years ago. He later worked at CERN, and in 2009 he came to PSI. Now his specialty is injecting the electrons into the ring. “We’re about to see if all the new components fit together as precisely as we planned and calculated beforehand.” Aiba was himself involved in these detailed calculations – preparations for the renovation began several years ago.

On Tuesday, 14 January, the team succeeds in introducing the electrons into the first part of the storage ring. The particles do not get very far at first; which isn’t the first goal anyway. “It would be useless if we sent the electrons to do a full round once, but it was a bad round,” Aiba explains. The particles are so fast that, when SLS is operating, they fly through the entire ring a million times every second – even the smallest disturbance is noticeable. Actually storing the electrons in the ring only works if the first and therefore all subsequent rounds are as perfect as possible.

On his screens, Aiba can see exactly when the beam is not advancing well enough, and which magnet then needs to be adjusted and how. “Then we switch the machine off and confer with the people from the metrology group. They go into the accelerator tunnel and correct the magnets.” This part of the process is completely analogue, as screwdrivers are used to fine-tune individual permanent magnets until they are even better adjusted.

These new high-performance magnets are a crucial part of project SLS 2.0: the total number of magnets has been significantly increased; but where previously only electromagnets were installed, a large number of permanent magnets are now also in use. This makes the SLS a facility that is unique in the world and saves 60 percent energy compared to before. In addition, the permanent magnets reduce the noise that can affect the electron beam. All in all, the upgrade makes the electron beam 40 times better than before.

From a quarter of a lap to a million

On Wednesday, 15 January, the electrons are making it through the first quarter of the ring. One of the software windows on the second screen from the right displays a graphic with a row of 130 green dots, like pearls on a string. They show the measured values of the so-called beam position monitors, which register the position and intensity of the electron beam along the ring. The first 30 or so points have moved up, while all those behind them are still on the zero line – indicating how far the beam is getting so far. To make it farther, a few technical adjustments are now required.

Read more on PSI website

Image: Jonas Kallestrup, Masamitsu Aiba, and Felix Armborst (from left) in the PSI control room. They are part of the commissioning team that has now brought electrons back into the electron storage ring of the synchrotron as part of the SLS 2.0 upgrade project.

Credit: Paul Scherrer Institute PSI/Markus Fischer

Inprentus Awarded Contract to Provide 6 Diffraction Gratings for X-ray Optics at The ALS

Inprentus Awarded Contract to Provide 6 Diffraction Gratings for X-ray Optics at The ALS

Inprentus manufactures the world’s most advanced diffraction gratings for x-ray applications, offering unparalleled efficiency and high resolving power

Inprentus has been awarded a $427,300 contract to provide Lawrence Berkeley National Lab’s Advance Light Source (ALS) with 6 diffraction gratings for its facility upgrade, 2 for the COSMIC beamline, and 4 for the MAESTRO beamline.

The upgraded ALS will occupy the same facility as the current ALS, replacing the existing electron storage ring and leveraging $500 million in existing ALS infrastructure and experimental systems. Recent accelerator physics breakthroughs now enable the production of highly focused beams of soft x-ray light that are at least 100 times brighter than those of the existing ALS. The upgraded facility will produce bright, steady beams of high-energy light to probe matter with unprecedented detail. Applying this technology at the ALS will help enable a better understanding of and development of new materials and chemical systems needed to advance our energy, economic, and national security needs in the 21st century, securing the United States’ world scientific leadership for decades to come.

To allow users to take full advantage of the source’s state of the art upgraded capabilities, the ALS requires advanced cutting-edge optics. The cutting-edge variable line spacing (VLS) blazed gratings, provided by Inprentus, will be part of beamline optical instrumentation. Inprentus’ differentiating capability to produce a blaze angle of less than 2 degrees across the grating, as well as providing the highest efficiency and resolving power and an ultra-low blaze angle to accommodate grazing optics with a large beam footprint, were important factors in the choice to award Inprentus with this contract.

“The Inprentus team has dedicated many years of planning and scientific excellence into qualifying for this mammoth project. We are excited to take on this challenge and have already started delivering the gratings way ahead of schedule. That is why Inprentus is sought-after in the gratings industry – we have lowered the barrier for radiation hard, scientifically complex, master diffraction gratings with high-performance deliverables, in addition to our industry-leading fast turn-around time. We will continue to expand on this excellence,” explained Jeff MacDonald, Inprentus CEO.

Read more here

Image: Diffraction Grating Manufactured by Inprentus

IMPACT: Upgrade at PSI research facility approved

IMPACT: Upgrade at PSI research facility approved

Green light for IMPACT: The upgrade at the proton accelerator facility at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI planned for the coming years will be implemented. Funding for this two-part enhancement was assured within the framework of the ERI Dispatch 2025-2028.

Financing of the Swiss Dispatch on promotion of Education, Research, and Innovation (ERI) in the years 2025 through 2028 was approved in mid-December 2024 in the Swiss Parliament. This means the budget that the ETH Domain is to receive for the coming years has been approved. This budget includes 50 million Swiss francs with which the ETH Council will co-finance the IMPACT project from central funds in the period 2025-2028. The upgrade to the user facilities associated with the proton accelerator at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI can thus be realised.

IMPACT is a joint project of PSI, the University of Zurich, and the University Hospital of Zurich. It comprises two significant upgrades to PSI’s research facilities: 

First, under the name HIMB, two beamlines for experiments with muons will be significantly improved. Muons are secondary particles generated by the protons. HIMB will increase by a factor of 100 the number of muons used for research purposes, for example in physics and materials science.

Second, a new facility called TATTOOS will be built, where important radionuclides can be produced. Radionuclides are used to produce radiopharmaceuticals, which in turn are used to diagnose and treat cancer.

“We are very pleased that funding for IMPACT has been approved as part of the ERI dispatch,” says PSI Director Christian Rüegg. “We are proud and grateful that we can continue to invest in the future. Education and research secure the prosperity and independence of Switzerland,” continues Rüegg. “Especially in financially difficult times, we therefore need strong research and innovation and strategic, forward-looking investments. IMPACT is an important step for the future of materials research, medicine and particle physics.”

Read more on the PSI website

Image: PSI Director Christian Rüegg at the cover of the cyclotron, which represents the third acceleration stage for the proton beam at PSI, which is unique worldwide.

Credit: © Scanderbeg Sauer Photography

New upgrade will supercharge atomic vision of the world’s most powerful X-ray laser

New upgrade will supercharge atomic vision of the world’s most powerful X-ray laser

The high-energy upgrade will keep the U.S. at the forefront of X-ray science and technology, allowing researchers to advance fields such as sustainability, human health and quantum information.

The Department of Energy (DOE) has given the green light for construction to begin on a high-energy upgrade that will further boost the performance of the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS), the world’s most powerful X-ray free-electron laser (XFEL) at the DOE’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. When complete, the upgrade will allow scientists to explore atomic-scale processes with unprecedented precision and address fundamental questions in energy storage, catalysis, biology, materials science and quantum physics like never before.

“This high-energy upgrade to LCLS strengthens the lab’s position as a world leader in X-ray and ultrafast science,” said SLAC Lab Director John Sarrao. “With the critical support of the Department of Energy’s Office of Science and our partner labs, the upgrade, when complete, will open new avenues for scientific discovery and innovation. This will continue to attract top talent and foster groundbreaking research across multiple disciplines.”

In 2023, SLAC celebrated completion of the LCLS-II project, taking X-ray science to a whole new level with the addition of a superconducting accelerator, two new magnetic structures, called undulators, to generate soft and hard X-rays from the electron beam, and other major leaps in technology that allow the facility to produce up to a million X-ray pulses per second – 8,000 times more than its predecessor.

The new upgrade project, called LCLS-II-HE, will double the energy of the electron beam coming out of the superconducting electron accelerator, which will more than double the maximum X-ray energy and deliver a 3,000-fold performance increase in average X-ray brightness for “hard,” or high-energy, X-rays. 

“The LCLS-II-HE upgrade will be a transformative advance for the scientific mission of DOE Basic Energy Sciences and the broader scientific community,” said LCLS Director Mike Dunne. “If the LCLS-II upgrade enabled a high-quality movie camera capable of capturing clear and detailed images, the LCLS-II-HE upgrade greatly boosts that camera’s resolution and sensitivity. Scientists will be able to image the atomic-scale motion of materials, chemical systems and biological complexes to address some of the most critical challenges facing our society.”

With favorable Critical Decisions 2 and 3 (CD-2/3) in September 2024, DOE has formally approved construction of the $716M project, representing a significant advancement in X-ray laser technology.

Read more on SLAC website

Excited About SLS 2.0!

Excited About SLS 2.0!

After 22 years of brilliant science, at 8am on the 30th of September 2023, the SLS went into temporary shutdown as the SLS 2.0 upgrade began. In the video series #ThankYouSLS, seven beamline scientists from PSI looked back on a few of the many discoveries made possible by light from the SLS. 

Now in a new video series #ExcitedAboutSLS, the same researchers tell us why they can’t wait for the SLS 2.0 upgrade. Across the diverse applications, stretching from molecular biology to quantum materials, the researchers look forward to faster experiments, higher resolution, and more realistic conditions. With this, the light of SLS 2.0 – and the thousands of scientists from around the world that use it – will address societal challenges such as health and the energy transition.

Read more on SLS website

Ushering in a brilliant future at the APS

Ushering in a brilliant future at the APS

Elected officials, Department of Energy leaders and other luminaries joined Argonne today to dedicate the upgraded APS

On a bright day in July, a crowd of hundreds gathered at the site of the Advanced Photon Source (APS) in Lemont, Illinois to welcome even brighter days ahead.

The APS, a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science user facility at DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory, has emerged from a year-long shutdown ready for its second act. A comprehensive upgrade to the facility is underway, and its centerpiece was the removal of the original electron storage ring — installed in the early 1990s — and the installation of a brand new one. Powered by this new assemblage of magnets, vacuum chambers and wires, the upgraded APS will generate X-ray beams that are up to 500 times brighter than the already formidable beams of the original APS.

This puts the APS at the top of the list of the world’s synchrotron X-ray light sources. The upgraded facility has been operating for months, and scientific beamlines — the experiment stations where data is taken and discoveries made — have been gradually coming back online. When at its full brightness, the upgraded APS will be untouchable in the realm of X-ray science, enabling new insights and laying the groundwork for innovations in every field imaginable.

“The Advanced Photon Source has been a preeminent destination for the world’s scientists for decades, and with its expanded capabilities, it will continue to set the bar for X-ray research for decades to come.” — Geri Richmond, DOE undersecretary for science and innovation

“The upgraded Advanced Photon Source represents a significant investment by the Department of Energy in the future of American science and innovation,” said Harriet Kung, DOE’s Acting Director for the Office of Science. ​“DOE’s mission is to enable research that will help us tackle the energy challenges of the future, and the advancements that will come from the renewed APS will chart that path forward.”

Today’s ceremony dedicating the upgraded APS featured remarks from DOE Undersecretary for Science and Innovation Geri Richmond, along with a bevy of elected officials, CEOs and laboratory leaders. Richmond praised the APS’s contributions to American leadership in science and technology.

“The Advanced Photon Source has been a preeminent destination for the world’s scientists for decades, and with its expanded capabilities, it will continue to set the bar for X-ray research for decades to come,” Richmond said.

In a typical year, more than 5,500 scientists from across the country and around the world use the APS to probe the secrets of materials and natural phenomena. APS research tells us more about the materials that make up the world we live in and lays the groundwork for more durable microelectronic devices, longer-lasting and faster-charging batteries and more portable and efficient solar panels to combat the energy challenges of the future.

The upgrade to the APS has been more than a decade in the planning and includes not just the new storage ring but several new experiment stations — called beamlines — to take advantage of the enhanced X-ray beams. The updated facility is powered by a world’s-first injection technique called swap-out (see infographic), and the new and enhanced beamlines offer scientists new techniques to examine their samples in unprecedented detail.

Read more on the APS website

World’s first successful multi-bunch swap-out injection at the APS

World’s first successful multi-bunch swap-out injection at the APS

The upgraded Advanced Photon Source (APS), a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science user facility located at Argonne National Laboratory, is now the world’s first synchrotron light source to use a multi-bunch swap-out method of replenishing the electron beam in its storage ring.

On April 29, 2024, Argonne’s Accelerator Systems Division (ASD) team successfully demonstrated multi-bunch swap-out injection of a stored beam of electrons. Regular injections into the ring are required because electron beams have a limited lifetime. Electrons scatter as they circulate, and eventually the beam is depleted and must be replenished. In the late 1990s, the APS pioneered top-up injection, which provides nearly constant stored beam current to X-ray experiments by “topping up” electron bunches that have lost electrons. This has become a standard operation mode for light sources worldwide.

Read more on APS website

Image: The near constant storage ring current is the result of electron bunches being injected through the booster to storage ring transfer line (BTS) while a corresponding electron bunch in the storage ring is kicked out into the swap-out dump.

Commissioning of new APS storage ring begins

Commissioning of new APS storage ring begins

The Advanced Photon Source (APS) Upgrade project officially moved into a new phase today, as commissioning of the new storage ring began.

The start of commissioning follows a successful Accelerator Readiness Review (ARR) conducted from March 25-28, and the subsequent approval from the DOE Argonne Site Office. It marks a major milestone in the upgrade project and a big step toward bringing the rejuvenated APS facility to life. 

The upgrade of the APS has been in the planning stages for a decade. Over the past year, the team has removed the original storage ring and assembled not just the 200 modules of the new one, but literally thousands of associated components and systems in its place, followed by a thorough test and checkout of the new systems. The new electron storage ring has been designed to generate X-ray beams that will be up to 500 times brighter than those of the original APS.

Read more on APS website

 SLS 2.0 upgrade 

 SLS 2.0 upgrade 

“The philosophy of the SLS has always been to explore novel techniques and use cutting-edge hardware, which has resulted in breakthroughs in areas such as imaging, X-ray spectroscopies, macro-molecular crystallography and detector technologies,” write Phil Willmott and Hans Braun in an article about the SLS 2.0 upgrade in Synchrotron Radiation News this month.

This philosophy of innovation underpins the comprehensive upgrade of the storage ring and X-ray sources of the Swiss Light Source SLS, which is currently underway. 

Better behaved electrons mean brighter X-ray light

The storage ring is the part of the facility where electrons zip around close to the speed of light, generating X-ray light as they go round the bends. The main parameter used to describe the quality of the X-ray light produced is brilliance, which effectively indicates how bright, compact, and well collimated the light is. 

For a more mathematical definition, brilliance is defined as the photon flux divided by the emittance – a parameter that describes how collimated the electron beam is and its cross-section in the storage ring. To maximise brilliance, the electron emittance should be as low as possible. 

This is the principle of a diffraction limited storage ring (DLSR): reducing electron emittance to the point that it is as small or smaller than that of the X-ray photons. The emittance of the X-ray photons is governed by fundamental diffraction phenomena. The performance of the synchrotron is thus limited by diffraction and no longer by the properties of the electron beam. 

The primary way in which this is achieved for SLS 2.0 is with an innovative arrangement of magnets for bending and focusing the electrons. By using more, smaller magnets, these smooth out the curves of the electrons round the storage ring, while keeping them close together. 

The new SLS 2.0 storage ring will allow the electron emittance to drop by a factor of thirty-five. With innovative new undulators enabling additional so-called radiation damping, the drop in electron emittance should exceed a factor of forty.

Read more on PSI website

Image: Work to install the new storage ring is already underway at the SLS. (Image: Paul Scherrer Institute

Credit: Markus Fischer

The future of BESSY

The future of BESSY

In autumn 2023, HZB celebrated 25 years of research at the BESSY II light source in Berlin-Adlershof. To continue offering scientists from all over the world the best research opportunities in the coming decades, it is important to have a vision for BESSY II. In addition, many light sources around the world are currently being modernised or even newly built to keep up with the latest research questions and contribute with state-of-the art research infrastructures.

The article “Material Discovery at BESSY” shows the relevance of BESSY light source for the research questions of the future. The HZB team describes the goals of the BESSY II+ upgrade programme. Among other things, the programme aims to expand operando techniques that are of great benefit in developing materials for the energy transition.

Read more on HZB website

Image: This is what the successor source BESSY III could look like in the future.

Credit: HZB

New Argonne-led project to advance data analysis methods for light sources

New Argonne-led project to advance data analysis methods for light sources

The U.S. Department of Energy has approved funding for three 5-year projects focused on the integration of high performance computing at its X-ray and neutron source user facilities.

As scientific facilities get more powerful, the amount and complexity of the data they generate will only grow. Advanced computing resources and techniques will be required to keep up with the sheer volume of data flowing from next-generation facilities. One of those will be the upgraded Advanced Photon Source (APS), a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science user facility at DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory.

The Office of Science has recently approved $30 million in funding for three new projects aimed at integrating high performance computing at DOE’s X-ray and neutron light source facilities. Five million of that funding will go to an Argonne-led research project called X-ray & Neutron Scientific Center for Optimization, Prediction and Experimentation (XSCOPE). This project will tackle the technical obstacles and tools needed to enhance data analysis capabilities at X-ray and neutron source user facilities. It aims to address challenges in computational science, applied mathematics and artificial intelligence/machine learning relevant to X-ray light sources. Its focus will be on the APS as the upgraded facility comes online next year.

“These capabilities will accelerate the discovery process and help to answer some of the most pressing scientific challenges of our time.” — Sven Leyffer, Argonne National Laboratory

XSCOPE will focus on unlocking new and pressing scientific challenges while dealing with the deluge of data from large-scale X-ray facilities. Enhancing the data analytics capabilities of light sources such as the APS will help fuel discoveries in biotechnology, advanced materials for energy and microelectronics, and more.

The project is led jointly by Sven Leyffer, principal investigator and deputy director of Argonne’s Mathematics and Computer Science division; Ian Foster, director of Argonne’s Data Science and Learning division; and Nicholas Schwarz, the lead for scientific software and data management at the APS. The team includes X-ray and computational scientists from several areas of the lab.

Read more on Argonne website

Image: An upgrade to the APS will result in much brighter X-ray beams and much more data generated. Newly funded DOE projects will focus on integrating high performance computing with X-ray light sources such as the upgraded APS.

Credit: JJ Starr/Argonne National Laboratory

SLS 2.0: “Dark time” during the upgrade

SLS 2.0: “Dark time” during the upgrade

The Swiss Light Source SLS at PSI will shut down temporarily as part of a major upgrade project. It will come back online in 2025, ready to supply even more powerful synchrotron light than ever for innovative scientific experiments.

At 8 a.m. on the morning of Saturday 30 September, the Swiss Light Source SLS, one of PSI’s five large research facilities, will be shut down. It will remain out of operation for research purposes for over a year while the facility undergoes a comprehensive modernisation programme: the SLS 2.0 upgrade project.

The SLS is Switzerland’s only research facility using synchrotron light. It supplies highly concentrated X-ray light for scientific experiments in many fields, such as physics, materials science, chemistry, biology and medicine. Since it first came into service in 2001, some 22,500 experiments have been performed at the SLS. In addition, external researchers have visited the SLS to conduct scientific experiments around 53,000 times in these 22 years.

The purpose of the current upgrade is to make the high-calibre facility fit to address the scientific challenges of future decades. The upgrade will greatly increase the density of the X-ray light: the beam will be even brighter and collimated stronger. This will allow more samples to be examined at the SLS over the same amount of time or to get more scientific data over the same period. In many cases, performance will improve by up to a factor of 40. In addition, researchers will be able to visualise larger areas of a sample. In other experiments, the resolution of the images will be increased, so that in future it will be possible to investigate even smaller structures, for example in the nanoscale.

Research into systems for the energy transition

The upgrade will mainly affect the 288-metre-long electron storage ring. A new vacuum tube will be fitted, along with around one thousand new, complex magnets that will hold the electrons with high precision on a then improved circular path. As the electrons are accelerated to almost the speed of light they release a special type of X-ray light, or synchrotron radiation. This is used for scientific research at around twenty beam lines around the ring.

Several new beamlines will also be set up as part of the upgrade, including the future Debye beamline. Here, researchers will be able to study materials and systems, such as catalysers and batteries, that can contribute towards the energy transition, not only with extreme precision, but under realistic operating conditions.

Other experimental stations at SLS are ideal for investigating the electronic or magnetic properties of materials that could be useful for the next generation of electronic devices, or for making non-destructive 3D recordings with a resolution of just a few nanometres. Yet other beamlines are used to examine proteins, the building blocks of life, whose precise knowledge helps to develop new medical agents.

Read more on PSI website

Image: PSI’s most iconic building, the Swiss Light Source SLS, is perfectly round and houses an electron storage ring with a circumference of 288 metres. Within this large-scale facility, electrons are accelerated to almost the speed of light and supply intense, highly concentrated synchrotron light to around 20 experimental stations for research purposes.

Credit: Paul Scherrer Institute/Michel Jaussi Photography

Ready, set, upgrade: Advanced Photon Source’s overhaul is underway

Ready, set, upgrade: Advanced Photon Source’s overhaul is underway

The facility is undergoing a comprehensive upgrade. Afterwards, the new APS will be able to generate X-ray beams 500 times brighter

Over the past three years, thousands of machine parts have been delivered to a low-slung, deceptively plain building in Lemont, Illinois. Once a warehouse, Building 981 is now a workshop — an extremely sophisticated one. Inside, a multitalented team assembles the building blocks of a complicated yet elegant machine, one that will sit at the heart of the Advanced Photon Source (APS), a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science user facility at DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory.

This new machine is part of a comprehensive upgrade to the facility, one that will set it at the forefront of global X-ray science for decades to come.

More than 5,500 scientists in a typical year use the APS for its intensely bright X-ray beams. Since it began operating in the mid-1990s, the APS has enabled advances in the fields of medicine, energy, climate, physics and more. The drug Paxlovid, devised to treat COVID-19, emerged from work at the APS. So did two Nobel Prizes in chemistry. These and many other breakthroughs have resulted from the APS’s ability to illuminate the otherwise invisible.

“The APS Upgrade opens up possibilities that could not be envisioned till now.” — Suresh Narayanan, Argonne Physicist

Now comes a moment more than a decade in the making. The APS’s powerful engines shut down on April 24, to make way for this new machine, called a storage ring, which circulates electrons in order to deliver X-ray beams up to 500 times brighter than the current one. That required first dismantling the existing storage ring, which spanned about two-thirds of a mile around. This phase of the project is now complete. The next phase will see the new components from Building 981 — preassembled into 200 modules weighing up to 50,000 pounds each — moved in this summer, when installation will begin in earnest.

Read more on the Argonne website

Image: Workers remove the final girder of the original APS. The new ring will be made up of 200 modules, each with precisely aligned electromagnets and complex vacuum and electrical systems

Credit: Argonne National Laboratory J.J Starr

Historic Advanced Photon Source magnet sees the light of day for the first time in 29 years

Historic Advanced Photon Source magnet sees the light of day for the first time in 29 years

Historic Advanced Photon Source magnet sees the light of day for the first time in 29 years

Many of the Argonne employees who signed the magnet in 1994 still work for the laboratory, and their experiences building the original APS are vital to the ongoing effort to upgrade the facility.

On September 8, 1994, a group of people affixed their signatures in white ink onto a long red magnet. This was the final dipole magnet (of 81, including spares) built and tested for inclusion in a complex machine known as the Advanced Photon Source (APS), a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science user facility at DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory. By sheer chance, it also happened to be part of the final module of magnets to be installed in the APS facility.

Once signed, the magnet took its place next to its fellows and, for the next 28 years, it helped to steer particles called electrons circulating in a large storage ring. Those electrons were manipulated to create bright X-ray beams that thousands of scientists have used over the years to conduct thousands of experiments for the betterment of humankind.

“We expect the new machine to work a hundred times better than the old one. We learned many lessons building the APS, and the best part is that many of the people who learned those lessons are around now to help us build the new one.”  — Glenn Decker, APS Upgrade Project

Now the original APS is undergoing an $815 million upgrade, and the original APS storage ring is being removed to make way for a more modern one. And so, on May 23, the signed dipole magnet was taken back out of the storage ring facility, seeing the light of day for the first time in 29 years. As it emerged, it brought with it many memories, emerging fresh in the minds of those who were there in 1994, building a dream machine.

Read more on the Argonne website

Image: The final module of magnets to be installed in the Advanced Photon Source in September 1994, surrounded by several of the people who signed it at the time. The module was removed in May 2023 as part of the APS Upgrade Project.

Credit: Jason Creps, Argonne National Laboratory