News Release Communique
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, April 6th, 2004
A commissioning run at the Canadian Light Source at 3:00 a.m. on April 2 has brought the beam electron current in the storage ring up to 100 milliamps – more than enough current to test the beamlines and start doing science.
“There’s plenty of light for commissioning of the beamlines to begin,” says Les Dallin, accelerator physicist and commissioning leader at the Canadian Light Source. “In fact, we’ll probably have to turn it down a bit so the beamline teams can test their components.”
The storage ring is the “engine” of the synchrotron, where a hair-thin beam of electrons is maintained at nearly the speed of light and shepherded around the ring by powerful magnets. Each time the beam is forced to change direction, it gives off brilliant synchrotron light. Beamlines and experiment stations are built to take advantage of this light to study everything from better medicines and how crops react to frost, to advanced lubricants and arsenic in the environment.
Dallin’s team has reached all its design goals for 2004, with the exception of beam lifetime. Currently, the storage ring must be refilled with electrons every half hour, as the inside of the brand-new circular vacuum chamber is still losing stray molecules that bump into the beam. Much like the “break in” period of a new car, the synchrotron must be run for the next few months to clean up the inside of the storage ring. The goal is eight hours between fills.
Beamline teams are already building their facilities, the first of which should be ready for testing in the next six weeks. X-rays have already been produced from the first insertion device installed in the storage ring in March. This radiation was taken to the “front end” of the beamline that will be tested in May. Insertion devices are special magnet arrays used to produce the very bright “light” required by the beamline scientists. A short video clip of an insertion device test is available at www.lightsource.ca in the media area under “what’s new.”
For more information, contact:
Les Dallin
Accelerator Physicist
Canadian Light Source Inc.
(306) 657-3531
les.dallin@lightsource.ca
Michael Robin
Communications Officer
U of S Research Communications
(306) 966-2427
michael.robin@usask.ca
Last modified: 2012-01-19 17:01:54