The Canadian Light Source (CLS) is Canada’s national synchrotron light source facility and centre of scientific excellence. Since coming into user operations in 2005, the CLS has facilitated 2,416 peer-reviewed publications, 85 per cent of which were produced by Canadian researchers in the disciplines of physics, chemistry, biology, animal and human health, agriculture, engineering, archaeology, geology and paleontology. Unique in Canada, the CLS enables an extremely wide range of science projects on multiple experimental stations (beamlines) operating simultaneously. The beamlines are optimised for select parts of the light spectrum and used in a broad range of experimental techniques including spectroscopy, diffraction, imaging from the macro to the nanoscale and combinations thereof. Data collection can be relatively rapid (on the order of sub-second) and is of a quality and breadth not possible at any other facility in Canada.
