Synchrotron-Light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East
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This article needs to be updated. The reason given is: SESAME has been successfully operating for a number of years. There are 3 beamlines, the HESEB line was inaugurated in June 2022. Even the logo is different. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information.(June 2022)
The Synchrotron-Light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East (SESAME) is an independent laboratory located in Allan in the Balqagovernorate of Jordan, created under the auspices of UNESCO on 30 May 2002.[1]
Aimed at promoting peace between Middle Eastern countries, Jordan was chosen as the location for the laboratory, as it was then the only country that maintained diplomatic relations with all the other founding members; Bahrain, Cyprus, Egypt, Iran, Israel, Pakistan, the Palestinian Authority, and Turkey. The idea, to create a joint Arab-Israeli scientific collaboration, goes back to the 1980s[2] and took a more concrete form in discussions at CERN in 1993.[3][4] The project was launched in 1999 and the ground breaking ceremony was held on 6 January 2003. Construction work began the following July, and the facility was finally inaugurated on 16 May 2017 under the patronage and presence of King Abdullah II.[5][4][3]
The construction of the project costed around $98 million, with $5 million donated each by Jordan, Israel, Turkey, Iran, and the European Union.[6][7] The rest was donated by CERN from existing equipment.[7] Jordan became the greatest contributor to the project by donating land and building construction costs, and by pledging to build a $7 million solar power plant, which will make SESAME the first accelerator in the world to be powered by renewable energy.[7] The annual operational cost of $6 million are pledged by the members according to the size of their economies.[7]
The facility is the only synchrotron radiation facility in the Middle East and is one of around 60 in the world.[5]As of May2017[update], the president of the SESAME Council is Rolf Heuer. He was preceded by Christopher Llewellyn Smith (2008-2017) and Herwig Schopper (2004-2008).[8] All three were previously directors-general of CERN. Khaled Toukan, the chairman of the Jordan Atomic Energy Commission, is the current director and former vice-president of SESAME.[9]
Background
Synchrotron light (also referred to as synchrotron radiation) is radiation that is emitted when charged particles moving at speeds near the speed of light are forced to change direction by a magnetic field. It is the brightest artificial source of X-rays, allowing for the detailed study of molecular structures. When synchrotrons were first developed, their primary purpose was to accelerate particles for the study of the nucleus. Today, there are almost 60 synchrotron light sources around the world dedicated to exploiting the special qualities, which allow it to be used across a wide range of applications, from condensed matter physics to structural biology, environmental science and cultural heritage.
The need for a large-scale scientific project to bring the Middle-East back into the scientific community as well as promote peace and foster international collaboration has been recognised for almost 40 years. In his speech at the 1979 Nobel Prize banquet, Pakistani physicist Mohammad Abdus Salam stated that we should "strive to provide equal opportunities to all so that they can engage in the creation of Physics and science for the benefit of all mankind".[10]
In his paper presented at the Symposium on the "Future Outlook of the Arabian Gulf University", on 11 May 1983, in Bahrain, titled The Gulf University and Science in the Arab-Islamic Commonwealth, Abdus Salam proposed the founding of a Super Gulf University and an international laboratory in material sciences in Bahrain.[11] Such a laboratory was proposed for the University of Jeddah, to emphasise science and technology transfer in the material sciences, including a laboratory with a synchrotron radiation light source. Ultimately, the proposal did not come through, possibly because it had the sponsorship of a single university rather than a consortium of universities.
In 1997, Herman Winick and Gustav-Adolf Voss[de] suggested building a light source in the Middle-East using components from the soon-to-be decommissioned BESSY I facility in Berlin, during two seminars organized in 1997 in Italy and in 1998 in Sweden by Tord Ekelöf with the CERN-based Middle East Scientific Co-operation (MESC) group headed by Sergio Fubini. Winick was credited with the idea of moving the machine to the Middle-East during discussions about the future of the machine. He explained "(his) main motivation is to help create a project in which people can work constructively and collectively."[12]
This proposal was adopted and pursued by MESC. The German government agreed to donate the necessary equipment at the request of Fubini and Herwig Schopper. Believing that the only chance of realizing such a project was following the example of CERN, the plan was brought to the attention of Federico Mayor, then Director-General of UNESCO, who organized the Consultative Meeting on a Middle East Synchrotron Light Facility, at UNESCO headquarters in Paris in June 1999. The meeting resulted in the launching of the project and the establishment of an International Interim Council under the chairmanship of Herwig Schopper.[13]
In May 2002, the executive board and Director General of UNESCO unanimously approved the establishment of the Centre under UNESCO auspices, through resolution 31C/Resolution 19.[14]
The groundbreaking ceremony for SESAME took place at Al-Balqa' Applied University in Jordan, on 6 January 2003. SESAME used offices at the UNESCO Office in Amman until the completion of the building in 2008.[15]
In April 2004, the centre formally came into existence when the required number of Members had informed UNESCO of their decision to join. and a permanent Council was established. The founding members were Bahrain, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Pakistan, and Turkey. The current Members are Cyprus, Egypt, Iran, Israel, Jordan, Pakistan, the Palestinian Authority, and Turkey. The Observers are Brazil, Canada, China, the European Union, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Japan, Kuwait, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States.[16]
SESAME was officially opened on 16 May 2017 by King Abdullah II of Jordan.[16]
Early Criticism
The German and French Ambassadors to UNESCO complained that Kōichirō Matsuura, then Director General of UNESCO, had not followed UNESCO protocol while making this decision. Schopper explained the difficult circumstances the project was facing and they withdrew their complaints. Matsuura did not need formal approval to provide the required funds because the Japanese government had given him a budget to be used at his discretion when he was appointed Director General.[17]
SESAME faced a further setback when the German government was asked to withdraw the authorization of export of BESSY I after public criticism was raised because some scientists claimed that it is possible to produce nuclear materials for atomic bombs with SESAME. Schopper was invited to a televised discussion with Professor Dr. Reinhard Brandt, one of the scientists who made the critical claims. The objections were eventually resolved, as Schopper explained that although some plutonium could have been produced, it would not have been a sufficient amount to develop a bomb.[18] The BESSY I components were eventually shipped from Berlin to Hamburg and then to the Zarqa Free Zone in Jordan, where they were held by the Jordanian government until SESAME was formally founded and the building was ready to accept the components.[15]
Location
Before UNESCO could formally approve SESAME, the issue of finding a host country and a site had to be resolved. The Interim Council agreed on a set of criteria which had to be satisfied by the host country and site. The lab had to be accessible, geographically and politically, to scientists from all over the world, and the host state should be strongly committed to the project, and should provide the land on which the lab would be based for free, as well as provide the building itself and the technical infrastructure (roads, water, electricity).[17]
Seven Members (Armenia, Egypt, Iran, Jordan, Oman, Palestine and Turkey) proposed 12 sites. UNESCO Assistant Director General for Natural Sciences, Maurizio Iaccarino, and Schopper visited Egypt, Israel, Jordan and Palestine in September 1999. The Armenian, Iranian and Turkish proposals were explored at Interim Council Meetings.[15]
Although Egypt expressed strong interest in the project, a long procedure which involved going through many authorities was necessary before the project could be presented to the Prime Minister, and the proposal was ultimately deemed unfit. The Palestinian National Authority, although interested in the project, did not have the financial capacity to meet the Interim Council's criteria. For political reasons, Israel could not provide a site accessible to all scientists. Additionally, Israel was already heavily involved in the ESRF laboratory at Grenoble, and were contractually bound to provide considerable funds. Furthermore, biologists did not see how they would benefit from SESAME since they already had access to other laboratories across the world. Armenia offered to host SESAME in their building Synchrotron Laboratory at Erevan since their accelerator was outdated. Their proposal was strengthened with the backing of wealthy Iraqi-born Armenian-American businessman Kevork Hovnanian. However, it was later realized that several alterations to the building were necessary to make it a viable site for SESAME. Iran, considered a rogue state at the time, though interested in the project, could not guarantee access to scientists from all countries, and so the proposal was ultimately unsuccessful.[17]
Approving Jordan
In Jordan, Adnan Badran, deputy director of UNESCO from 1992 to 1998, organised a meeting with representatives from universities and other organisations. No government members could be met, and no commitment was obtained. In a last ditch effort to save the project, Schopper contacted his former student Isa Khubeis, then vice-president of Al-Balqa Applied University. Khubeis invited Iaccarino and Schopper to dinner along with Khaled Toukan, President of Al-Balqa University, and Prince Ghazi Bin Muhammad, who chairman of the Board of Governors of the university and a close advisor of King Abdullah II. Schopper explained the situation to Prince Ghazi, who arranged a meeting with King Abdullah for the following day. King Abdullah formally committed Jordan to the project during the meeting in a signed letter addressed to the Director General of UNESCO.[17]
After long discussions and a series of votes, Jordan was formally approved to be the host of the Centre at the third meeting of the SESAME Interim Council in June 2000. Egypt and Iran withdrew their proposals before the final round of voting. The decision was ratified by 9 votes in favour and 1 abstention. Jordan was seen as an appropriate location for the project because it was the only country at the time to have maintained diplomatic relations with all other founding members: Bahrain, Cyprus, Egypt, Iran, Israel, Pakistan, the Palestinian Authority, and Turkey.[15]
Cost
The project cost around $98 million, with $5 million donated each by Jordan, Israel, Turkey, Iran and the European Union.[19][4] The rest was in kind donations of equipment by CERN,[19] and land by Jordan (the largest contributor to the project). Jordan also contributed the building construction costs, and a $7 million solar power plant, making SESAME the first accelerator in the world powered solely by renewable energy.[19] The annual operational cost of $6 million is split between the members, according to the sizes of their economies.[19]
As well as the drawn-out process in deciding which country should host SESAME, the project came across several other difficulties on its path to completion. Possibly the largest issue was its funding. Because the major components of the laboratory from the decommissioned BESSY I experiment, originally valued at $60 million, were being donated by the German government, funding on that front was not an issue. However, the German government stipulated that the cost of dismantling, including documentation, packing and transport, had to be provided by SESAME. The cost was an estimated $600,000, and had to be guaranteed before the end of 1999 because the BESSY building had been promised to the Max Planck Society. Schopper had been informed of this condition only a few hours before the Interim Council meeting, and asking for voluntary contributions would have been ineffective because most delegates at the meeting would not have had the authority to make financial decision. After a discussion between the Interim Council, the United States State Department, Sweden and Russia agreed to provide $200,000. Schopper saw only one possible option to save the project. He asked UNESCO Director General Koichiro Matsuura to arrange an emergency meeting. They had a lunch together, and Schopper asked Matsuura to fund the missing $400,000 immediately. Matsuura agreed to the request and the Interim Council Members were informed after the lunch.[17]
Because the BESSY components were used only as an injector system, the construction of a new main ring was still needed for SESAME. The estimated cost of the ring was $10 million so additional sources of funding were required. On 23 July 2001 a formal proposal supported by the German and French Ministers of Research, and later the Commissioner for Research Philippe Busquin, was submitted to European Commissioner Chris Patten. In October 2001 chef de cabinet of Commissioner Patten, Anthony Cary, informed Schopper that an independent evaluation by a panel of international experts was needed. The Techno-Economic Feasibility Study was under the guidance of Professor Guy Le Lay of the University of Marseille. The report concluded that the project was promising and would "effectively stimulate scientific activity and cooperation in the Middle East". However, in August 2003, Commissioner Patten stated that "the Commission is not in a position at this stage to provide Community funding to SESAME". In a subsequent meeting arranged between the Jordanian government, SESAME representatives and the EU Commission, the main of contention was the project's energy level. It was claimed that a competitive facility needed a higher energy level. A compromise was reached that the machine should start at 2 GeV, with 2.5 GeV available at a later stage. This would have increased the cost of the ring by another $2 million.[17]
The issue was eventually resolved through negotiations started by Director General Rolf Heuer between CERN and the Commissioner for Research and Innovation, Carlos Moedas. About $5 million were approved for CERN to be used for the construction of the magnets of the SESAME main ring.[20]
The Sergio Fubini Guesthouse that was inaugurated in December 2019 was funded by the Government of Italy represented by the Ministry for Education, University and Research through INFN.[21]
The microtron accelerates electrons to the energy of 22.5 MeV, and injects them into the booster. It was fully operational in November 2011.[23]
Booster synchrotron
The booster synchrotron receives electrons from the microtron, and accelerates them to 800 MeV, for injection into the storage ring. The booster was created with parts from the German synchrotron facility BESSY, which was decommissioned in 1999.[19]
Storage ring
The storage ring accelerates electrons to 2.5 GeV, and keeps them circulating for as long as two hours. As the electrons go around the storage ring, they emit x-rays. Lost energy is replaced as the beam travels through radio frequency cavities along the ring.
Beamlines
X-rays from the storage ring are directed to beamlines, where research experiments are performed.
BASEMA (Beamline for Absorption Spectroscopy for Environmental and Material Applications ), a beamline for X-ray absorption fine structure (XAFS) and X-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectroscopy, the 'day-one' beamline to be ready in March/April 2017
EMIRA (ElectroMagnetic Infrared RAdiation) for IR (Infrared Spectromicroscopy), is the second 'day-one' beamline, in this case that to start operations in April/May 2017
SUSAM (SESAME USers Application for Materials Science) or Materials Science (MS), to be completed at the end of the third quarter of 2017
Although the current facility has space for seven light beams, only two beams were operational when the facility opened in 2017.[19] The first beam is an X-ray beam that will be used to study pollution in the Jordan Valley, among other things.[19] While the second beam provides infrared radiation for a microscope that would study biological tissue; including cancer cells.[19][24] The rest are planned for later, with the third beam, an X-ray source used for crystallography, slated for late 2017.[19]
The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN, is an intergovernmental organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Established in 1954, it is based in Meyrin, western suburb of Geneva, on the France–Switzerland border. It comprises 23 member states. Israel, admitted in 2013, is the only non-European full member. CERN is an official United Nations General Assembly observer.
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.
SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, originally named the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, is a federally funded research and development center in Menlo Park, California, United States. Founded in 1962, the laboratory is now sponsored by the United States Department of Energy and administrated by Stanford University. It is the site of the Stanford Linear Accelerator, a 3.2 kilometer (2-mile) linear accelerator constructed in 1966 that could accelerate electrons to energies of 50 GeV.
Diamond Light Source is the UK's national synchrotron light source science facility located at the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus in Oxfordshire.
In accelerator physics, a beamline refers to the trajectory of the beam of particles, including the overall construction of the path segment along a specific path of an accelerator facility. This part is either
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 synchrotron is one of the first accelerator concepts to enable the construction of large-scale facilities, since bending, beam focusing and acceleration can be separated into different components. The most powerful modern particle accelerators use versions of the synchrotron design. The largest synchrotron-type accelerator, also the largest particle accelerator in the world, is the 27-kilometre-circumference (17 mi) Large Hadron Collider (LHC) near Geneva, Switzerland, built in 2008 by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). It can accelerate beams of protons to an energy of 7 tera electronvolts (TeV or 1012 eV).
The Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource, a division of SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, is operated by Stanford University for the Department of Energy. SSRL is a National User Facility which provides synchrotron radiation, a name given to electromagnetic radiation in the x-ray, ultraviolet, visible and infrared realms produced by electrons circulating in a storage ring at nearly the speed of light. The extremely bright light that is produced can be used to investigate various forms of matter ranging from objects of atomic and molecular size to man-made materials with unusual properties. The obtained information and knowledge is of great value to society, with impact in areas such as the environment, future technologies, health, biology, basic research, and education.
The Cornell Laboratory for Accelerator-based ScienceS and Education (CLASSE) is a particle accelerator facility located in Wilson Laboratory on the Cornell University campus in Ithaca, NY. CLASSE was formed by merging the Cornell High-Energy Synchrotron Source (CHESS) and the Laboratory for Elementary-Particle Physics (LEPP) in July 2006. Nigel Lockyer is the Director of CLASSE in spring of 2023.
ALBA is a third-generation synchrotron light source facility located in the Barcelona Synchrotron Park in Cerdanyola del Vallès near Barcelona, in Catalonia (Spain). It was constructed and is operated by CELLS, and co-financed by the Spanish central administration and regional Catalan Government.
The Roman pot is the name of a technique used in accelerator physics. Named after its implementation by the CERN-Rome collaboration in the early 1970s, it is an important tool to measure the total cross section of two particle beams in a collider. They are called pots because the detectors are housed in cylindrical vessels. The first generation of Roman pots was purpose-built by the CERN Central Workshops and used in the measurement of the total cross-section of proton-proton inter-actions in the ISR.
The Australian Synchrotron is a 3 GeV national synchrotron radiation facility located in Clayton, in the south-eastern suburbs of Melbourne, Victoria. The facility opened in 2007, and is operated by the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation.
Daresbury Laboratory is a scientific research laboratory based at Sci-Tech Daresbury campus near Daresbury in Halton, Cheshire, England. The laboratory began operations in 1962 and was officially opened on 16 June 1967 as the Daresbury Nuclear Physics Laboratory (DNPL) by the then Prime Minister of United Kingdom, Harold Wilson. It was the second national laboratory established by the British National Institute for Research in Nuclear Science, following the Rutherford High Energy Laboratory. It is operated by the Science and Technology Facilities Council, part of UK Research and Innovation. As of 2018, it employs around 300 staff, with Paul Vernon appointed as director in November 2020, taking over from Professor Susan Smith who had been director from 2012.
Herwig Franz Schopper is a German experimental physicist. He was the director general of CERN from 1981 to 1988.
The National Synchrotron Radiation Research Center synchrotron radiation facility at the Hsinchu Science Park in East District, Hsinchu City, Taiwan as the agency under the Ministry of Science and Technology of the Republic of China.
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.
The Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) is a Dresden-based research laboratory. It conducts research in three of the Helmholtz Association's areas: materials, health, and energy. HZDR is a member of the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres.
Jordan Atomic Energy Commission (JAEC) was established in place of the Jordan Nuclear Energy Commission. The main objective of the JAEC is to promote and develop peaceful utilization of atomic energy.
Zehra Sayers is a Turkish-British structural biologist. She has previously served as Interim President of the Sabancı University and co-chaired the scientific advisory committee for Synchrotron-Light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East (SESAME). She was part of a five-scientist group that received the AAAS Award for Science Diplomacy in 2019. She holds Turkish and British citizenship.
Gihan Kamel is an Egyptian physicist known for her work as an Infrared Beamline Scientist in the Synchrotron-light project for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East (SESAME). She lives in Jordan.
Tord Johan Carl Ekelöf is a Swedish professor of particle physics at Uppsala University.
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