DESY, short for Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron, is a national research centre for fundamental science located in Hamburg and Zeuthen near Berlin in Germany. It operates particle accelerators used to investigate the structure, dynamics and function of matter, and conducts a broad spectrum of interdisciplinary scientific research in four main areas: particle and high energy physics; photon science; astroparticle physics; and the development, construction and operation of particle accelerators. Its name refers to its first project, an electron synchrotron. DESY is publicly financed by the Federal Republic of Germany and the Federal States of Hamburg and Brandenburg and is a member of the Helmholtz Association.
A synchrotron light source is a source of electromagnetic radiation (EM) usually produced by a storage ring, for scientific and technical purposes. First observed in synchrotrons, synchrotron light is now produced by storage rings and other specialized particle accelerators, typically accelerating electrons. Once the high-energy electron beam has been generated, it is directed into auxiliary components such as bending magnets and insertion devices in storage rings and free electron lasers. These supply the strong magnetic fields perpendicular to the beam that are needed to stimulate the high energy electrons to emit photons.
Diamond Light Source is the UK's national synchrotron light source science facility located at the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus in Oxfordshire.
A synchrotron is a particular type of cyclic particle accelerator, descended from the cyclotron, in which the accelerating particle beam travels around a fixed closed-loop path. The magnetic field which bends the particle beam into its closed path increases with time during the accelerating process, being synchronized to the increasing kinetic energy of the particles.
The Advanced Photon Source (APS) at Argonne National Laboratory is a storage-ring-based high-energy X-ray light source facility. It is one of five X-ray light sources owned and funded by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science. The APS began operation on March 26, 1995. It is operated as a user facility, meaning that it is open to the world’s scientific community, and more than 5,500 researchers make use of its resources each year.
A free-electron laser (FEL) is a fourth generation light source producing extremely brilliant and short pulses of radiation. An FEL functions much as a laser but employs relativistic electrons as a gain medium instead of using stimulated emission from atomic or molecular excitations. In an FEL, a bunch of electrons passes through a magnetic structure called an undulator or wiggler to generate radiation, which re-interacts with the electrons to make them emit coherently, exponentially increasing its intensity.
The National Synchrotron Light Source (NSLS) at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) in Upton, New York was a national user research facility funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). Built from 1978 through 1984, and officially shut down on September 30, 2014, the NSLS was considered a second-generation synchrotron.
The Advanced Light Source (ALS) is a research facility at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California. One of the world's brightest sources of ultraviolet and soft x-ray light, the ALS is the first "third-generation" synchrotron light source in its energy range, providing multiple extremely bright sources of intense and coherent short-wavelength light for use in scientific experiments by researchers from around the world. It is funded by the US Department of Energy (DOE) and operated by the University of California. The current director is Dimitri Argyriou.
The Synchrotron Radiation Center (SRC), located in Stoughton, Wisconsin and operated by the University of Wisconsin–Madison, was a national synchrotron light source research facility, operating the Aladdin storage ring. From 1968 to 1987 SRC was the home of Tantalus, the first storage ring dedicated to the production of synchrotron radiation.
ASTRID2 is a synchrotron light source at the Department of Physics and Astronomy of Aarhus University. ASTRID2 was designed, constructed and is operated by the Centre for Storage Ring Facilities in Aarhus (ISA).
The Swiss Light Source (SLS) is a synchrotron located at the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) in Switzerland for producing electromagnetic radiation of high brightness. Planning started in 1991, the project was approved in 1997, and first light from the storage ring was seen at December 15, 2000. The experimental program started in June 2001 and it is used for research in materials science, biology and chemistry.
The European X-Ray Free-Electron Laser Facility is an X-ray research laser facility commissioned during 2017. The first laser pulses were produced in May 2017 and the facility started user operation in September 2017. The international project with twelve participating countries; nine shareholders at the time of commissioning, later joined by three other partners, is located in the German federal states of Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein. A free-electron laser generates high-intensity electromagnetic radiation by accelerating electrons to relativistic speeds and directing them through special magnetic structures. The European XFEL is constructed such that the electrons produce X-ray light in synchronisation, resulting in high-intensity X-ray pulses with the properties of laser light and at intensities much brighter than those produced by conventional synchrotron light sources.
MAX IV is a next-generation synchrotron radiation facility in Lund, Sweden. Its design and planning has been carried out within the Swedish national laboratory, MAX-lab, which up until 2015 operated three storage rings for synchrotron radiation research: MAX I, MAX II and MAX III. MAX-lab supported about 1000 users from over 30 countries annually. The facility operated 14 beamlines with a total of 19 independent experimental stations, supporting a wide range of experimental techniques such as macromolecular crystallography, electron spectroscopy, nanolithography and production of tagged photons for photo-nuclear experiments. The facility closed on 13 December 2015 in preparation for MAX IV.
The Berliner Elektronenspeicherring-Gesellschaft für Synchrotronstrahlung m. b. H., abbreviated BESSY, is a research establishment in the Adlershof district of Berlin. Founded on 5 March 1979, it currently operates one of Germany's 3rd generation synchrotron radiation facilities, BESSY II. Originally part of the Leibniz Association, BESSY now belongs to the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin.
ANKA is a synchrotron light source facility at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). The KIT runs ANKA as a national synchrotron light source and as a large scale user facility for the international science community. Being a large scale machine of the performance category LK II of the Helmholtz Association, ANKA is part of a national and European infrastructure offering research services to scientific and commercial users for their purposes in research and development. The facility was opened to external users in 2003.
The National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS-II) at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) in Upton, New York is a national user research facility funded primarily by the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Science. NSLS-II is a synchrotron light source, designed to produce X-rays 10,000 times brighter than BNL's original light source, the National Synchrotron Light Source (NSLS). NSLS-II supports research in energy security, advanced materials synthesis and manufacturing, environment, and human health.
The Hiroshima Synchrotron Radiation Center, also known as Hiroshima Synchrotron Orbital Radiation (HiSOR), at Hiroshima University is a national user research facility in Japan. It was founded in 1996 by the University Science Council at Hiroshima University initially as a combined educational and research facility before opening to users in Japan and across the world in 2002. It is the only synchrotron radiation experimental facility located at a national university in Japan. The HiSOR experimental hall contains two undulators that produce light in the ultraviolet to soft x-ray range. A total of 16 beamlines are supported by bending magnet and undulator radiation for use in basic studies of life sciences and physical sciences, especially solid-state physics.
Diffraction-limited storage rings (DLSR), or ultra-low emittance storage rings, are synchrotron light sources where the emittance of the electron-beam in the storage ring is smaller or comparable to the emittance of the x-ray photon beam they produce at the end of their insertion devices. These facilities operate in the soft to hard x-ray range (100eV—100keV) with extremely high brilliance (in the order of 1021—1022 photons/s/mm2/mrad2/0.1%BW)
SOLARIS is a synchrotron light source in the city of Kraków in Poland. It is the only one facility of its kind in Central-Eastern Europe. Built in 2015, under the auspices of the Jagiellonian University, it is located on the Campus of the 600th Anniversary of the Jagiellonian University Revival, in the southern part of the city. It is the central facility of the National Synchrotron Radiation Centre SOLARIS.
Sandra Gail Biedron is an American physicist who serves as the Director of Knowledge Transfer for the Center for Bright Beams as well as professor in Electrical & Computer Engineering and Mechanical Engineering at the University of New Mexico, where in 2021 she mentors nine graduate students and two post-doctoral researchers. Her research includes developing, controlling, operating, and using laser and particle accelerator systems. She is also Chief Scientist of Element Aero, a consulting and R&D company incorporated in 2002. She was elected Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2013.
