ESRF blazes a trail with the Extremely Brilliant Source programme
Since its inception thirty years ago as the world’s first third-generation synchrotron light source for research, the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) in Grenoble, France, has become a centre of scientific excellence, breaking records for its scientific output (30,000 publications, four Nobel prizes) as well as for the brilliance and stability of its X-ray beams.
The ESRF’s status as a leader in its field is largely thanks to constant developments in instrumentation and technology that ensure its X-ray source and beamlines remain state-of the art. In this context, the ESRF launched, in 2015, the Extremely Brilliant Source (EBS) programme, a €150M facility upgrade centred on the construction of a revolutionary low-emittance light source.
The new source will be achieved by replacing the existing storage ring lattice, a double-bend achromat (DBA) magnet sequence, with an innovative and award-winning hybrid multi-bend achromat (HMBA) lattice design, developed at the ESRF. This first-of-a-kind new storage ring combines an increase in the number of bending magnets (from two to seven in each of the 32 cells) with smaller sextupole settings and a large dynamic aperture, reducing the horizontal equilibrium emittance by nearly a factor 30 to produce an X-ray beam 100 times more brilliant and coherent than today.
This will be followed by the construction of brand-new flagship beamlines and the deep refurbishment of existing beamlines; an ambitious instrumentation programme with a particular focus on high-performance detectors; and cutting-edge experimental control and data analysis tools, all designed to exploit the enhanced performances of the new source.
Since 2015, the project has been in full swing, with thousands of components designed and procured and many produced in-house by ESRF experts, including the permanent magnet dipoles. In November 2017, the pre-assembly of the 128 EBS girders with magnets, vacuum chambers and instrumentation began and, today, over half of the girders are completed. In December, the accelerators will be switched off and staff will have 18 months to dismantle the existing storage ring – over 1700 tons of equipment – install and commission the new ring and restart a maximum number of beamlines, before returning to a full user programme in summer 2020.
Once completed, the upgrade will ensure the ESRF’s place at the forefront of X-ray science for decades to come. “EBS will provide new tools for the investigation of materials and living matter down to the nanometre scale and perhaps even the single atom, enabling us to write a new chapter in X-ray science,” confirms ESRF Director General Dr Francesco Sette.
