Ksrs inaugurated in moscow

To foster scientific collaborations among the Advanced Photon Source (APS), the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF), and the Super Photon Ring-8 GeV (SPring-8), the three facilities meet on a regular basis to hold technical discussions on accelerator and beamline topics and management and operational issues of common interest. The 2008 Three-Way Meeting (3WM) was held on March 18–19 at the APS with more than 20 representatives from each facility. Satellite workshops were also held on the topics of X-ray Optics, Nanoscience with X-rays, User Services, and Accelerator R&;D. The 3WM and satellite workshops served as platforms for presentations and discussions of new and exciting developments at the three synchrotron sources.     

PETRA IV Workshop on Research with High-Energy X-rays at Ultra-Low Emittance Sources

Recent advances in storage ring technology pioneered by MAX IV (Sweden) allow synchrotron radiation sources to achieve significantly smaller emittances than those currently in operation. This new, multi-bend achromat technology can thus boost spectral brightness, enabling unprecedented experimental possibilities. The high-energy synchrotron radiation facilities ESRF (France), SPring-8 (Japan), and APS (USA) have settled upgrade plans to improve their storage ring emittance by up to two orders of magnitude at 6 GeV electron energy. PETRA III at DESY has the largest circumference with 2.3 km. As the emittance scales favorably with the storage ring size, an upgrade of PETRA III offers the unique potential to reach a diffraction limit up to X-ray energies of 10 keV. Operating at 6 GeV with an emittance of 10 pmrad, this PETRA IV facility would pave the way for new experimental opportunities, especially for those using high photon energies.     

Data Analysis: Keeping Pace with Extraordinary Change

It is a very exciting time in the field of macromolecular crystallography for those of us who are fortunate enough to be involved in the development of instrumentation and software methods. The driver for much of this change has been the remarkable developments in synchrotron light sources and beamline instrumentation over the last two decades. In the 1990s, the ESRF, APS, and SPring-8 set the tone for many of these developments and the 2000s capitalized on them by seeding a host of medium-energy national light sources around the world.     

The study of orbital ordering with resonant x‐ray scattering

Japan has nearly 50 years of history in synchrotron radiation (SR) research and has realized the importance of synchrotron radiation in science advancement since the very beginning. As a result, many SR facilities have been constructed. Today, there are eight SR facilities in operation and three facilities under construction in Japan. Figure 1 shows the location of these facilities with their opening years. Japan has built the world's largest storage ring with circumference of 1.4 km (SPring-8) and the world's smallest ring with circumference of 3 m (Ritsumeikan SRC).     

12th annual advanced photon source users meeting and workshops

The advantages of synchrotron infrared radiation for micro-spectroscopy have already been demonstrated and exploited in most of the synchrotron facilities. The development of a similar instrument at the ESRF was driven by a twofold motivation.     

ESRF-EBS: The Extremely Brilliant Source Project

The ESRF—the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility—is an international user facility in Grenoble, France, and a leader in the generation of the most intense high-energy (6 GeV) X-rays in the world. It was the very first “third-generation” synchrotron to be built and its extremely brilliant light provides opportunities for scientists all over the world in the exploration of materials and living matter, ranging from the chemistry and physics of materials to archeology and cultural heritage, together with structural biology and medical applications, the sciences of the environment, and the sciences of information and nanotechnologies.     

Meeting Reports: 2005 Annual Meeting of JSSRR (Japanese Society for Synchrotron Radiation Research)

The 18th Annual Meeting and General Assembly of the Japanese Society for Synchrotron Radiation Research (JSSRR) and the joint symposium of synchrotron radiation facility user's society groups were held at Sun-Messe Tosu Conference Hall in Tosu City, Japan, from January 7 to 9, 2005. The meeting was attended by 607 people and included 6 symposiums, 96 oral presentations, and 356 poster presentations covering all aspects of synchrotron radiation research and technology. The meeting also included 49 industrial exhibitions.

The six symposiums were on “Recent progress on soft X-ray optical elements,” “Now and the future on SR-XRF analysis for biological and environmental sciences,” “Recent development of THz Coherent Synchrotron Radiation,” “Super high-resolution protein structure analysis,” “Frontlines of Bio-Nano-microspectroscopy by UV-SX high brilliance SR,” and “The role of synchrotron radiation in the future of science: groundbreaking SR utilization for research on excited states”.     

30th annual SSRL users’ meeting and workshops

Over the last 15 years, many 3^rd generation SR sources have been built throughout the world, either at energies of 1/2.5 or at 6 (ESRF, European Synchrotron Radiation Facility), 7 (APS, Advanced Photon Source), or 8 (SPring-8) GeV. These sources are characterized by a horizontal emittance in the range of 3–7 nm.rad with less than 1% coupling. With in-vacuum undulators, this kind of emittance enables the obtainment of brilliances between 10¹⁹–10²¹ph/s/mm²/mrad²/0.1% bw.     

European Synchrotron Users Unified

The landscape of synchrotron radiation facilities in Europe is diverse. In addition to the flagship ESRF, several national facilities exist or came into operation recently. In contrast to ESRF, which is financed for use by member countries, access of foreign users to national facilities is not easy. Even if their proposals pass the review process, they can only perform the experiments if funding is allocated to cover not only travel expenses, board and lodging of the experimenters, but also some compensation for the facility's operational costs; this is because national facilities are primarily funded for the home-country's users at that nation's costs.     

Scientific opportunities in nuclear resonance spectroscopy from source-driven revolution

From the beginning of its discovery the Mössbauer effect has continued to be one of the most powerful tools with broad applications in diverse areas of science and technology. With the advent of synchrotron radiation sources such as the Advanced Photon Source (APS), the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) and the Super Photon Ring-8 (SPring-8), the tool has enlarged its scope and delivered new capabilities. The popular techniques most generally used in the field of materials physics, chemical physics, geoscience, and biology are hyperfine spectroscopy via elastic nuclear forward scattering (NFS), vibrational spectroscopy via nuclear inelastic scattering (NRIXS), and, to a lesser extent, diffusional dynamics from quasielastic nuclear forward scattering (QNFS). As we look ahead, new storage rings with enhanced brilliance such as PETRA-III under construction at DESY, Hamburg, and PEP-III in its early design stage at SLAC, Stanford, will provide new and unique science opportunities. In the next two decades, x-ray free-electron lasers (XFELs), based both on self-amplified spontaneous emission (SASE-XFELs) and a seed (SXFELs), with unique time structure, coherence and a five to six orders higher average brilliance will truly revolutionize nuclear resonance applications in a major way. This overview is intended to briefly address the unique radiation characteristics of new sources on the horizon and to provide a glimpse of scientific prospects and dreams in the nuclear resonance field from the new radiation sources. We anticipate an expanded nuclear resonance research activity with applications such as spin and phonon mapping of a single nanostructure and their assemblies, interfaces, and surfaces; spin dynamics; nonequilibrium dynamics; photochemical reactions; excited-state spectroscopy; and nonlinear phenomena.     

Memorable Years for Synchrotron Radiation at the Institute of Nuclear Physics in Novosibirsk

In the early 1970s, the Institute of Nuclear Physics (INP) in Novosibirsk was a unique place in the world of accelerator physics. There were three operational electron-positron storage rings at the institution. All together, they covered beam operational energies from 200 MeV up to 2.2 GeV. It was not a big surprise for the developers of these state-of-the-art machines when the first users of synchrotron radiation showed up at the doorsteps of the Institute of Nuclear Physics, eager to take advantage of such unique radiation sources. And how very unique they were! Compared with several already relatively well-established operational synchrotrons around the world, such as DESY in Hamburg, NINA in Darsbury, and three synchrotrons in the Soviet Union—one at the Physical Institute in Pakhra, another at the Tomsk Polytechnical Institute, and a third at the Erevan Physical Institute—the storage ring sources provided much more stable and brighter radiation beams. Several storage rings built at that time in locations such as Japan, the US, and France were also on the verge of becoming available for synchrotron radiation users.     

Cutting-edge Results on Energies and Catalysts at SPring-8

What is an industrial researcher expecting from the use of synchrotron radiation at SPring-8? It seems that there are two answers. One expectation is that he is able to explain convincingly to his customers a distinctive advantage of the developed product in a visible manner, and the other is that he investigates essential quality of materials by returning to the starting point when he is at a loss what to do in the process of his R&D; thus he can gain the opportunity of making a technical breakthrough in his R&D. This is because SPring-8 provides the most powerful synchrotron radiation currently available. As a result, a researcher can understand the chemical-bonding states of the material structure at the atomic and electronic levels by utilizing new analytical tools such as XAFS (X-ray Absorption Fine Structure) and XRD (X-ray Diffraction), etc.     

Broad band infrared near-field spectroscopy at finger print region using SPring-8

The authors report infrared near-field spectroscopy using synchrotron radiation at BL43IR, SPring-8 in the finger print region. At the microspectroscopy station, the infrared synchrotron radiation beam is focused on a cantilever probe with a 3 μm square aperture. A comb-shaped Au electrode with the width of 3 μm and the distance of 3 μm is used for the reflection measurement. The Au electrodes can be resolved at 650 cm⁻¹ and the resolution is estimated to be λ/5.     

“Three-dimensional analysis of the pyrolysis behavior of solid fuel by ultra high-speed X-ray CT”

In this research, microscopic visualization of pyrolysis in woody biomass was conducted by using the BL20B2 beamline at “SPring-8,” a large synchrotron radiation facility. Changes in shape and internal structure of the woody biomass were visualized by ultra high-speed CT. The samples were made of Japanese cypress wood; they had a height and a diameter of 5 mm. We used radiation as the heat source to achieve a high heat flux. When the heat flux was high, the samples expanded. Gaps were observed inside the samples. By comparing our results with the experimental results obtained under a low heat flux in a previous study, we could observe an entirely different aspect. Considering that the increase in pressure due to the rapid generation of pyrolysis gas created gaps in the samples, the samples were drilled, and experiments were performed on them. The hole in the center of the wood alone did not create an escape route for the pyrolysis gas, and the pyrolysis behavior was the same as that observed in the unprocessed wood.     

Advances in nanomagnetism via X-ray techniques

This report examines the current status and the future directions of the field of nanomagnetism and assesses the ability of hard X-ray synchrotron facilities to provide new capabilities for making advances in this field. The report first identifies major research challenges that lie ahead in three broadly defined subfields of nanomagnetism: confined systems, clusters and complex oxides. It then examines the relevant experimental capabilities that are currently available at hard X-ray synchrotron light sources, using the Advanced Photon Source (APS) at Argonne as an example. Finally, recommendations are made for future development in X-ray facilities that will enhance the study of nanomagnetism, including new experimental directions, modifications that would enable in situ sample preparation, and measurements at high magnetic fields and/or low temperatures. In particular, in situ sample preparation is of high priority in many experiments, especially those in the area of surface magnetism.     

Non-invasive characterization of manufacturing techniques and corrosion of ancient Chinese bronzes and a later replica using synchrotron X-ray diffraction

Three bronze vessels from the ancient Chinese art collection at the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) were examined—with the advanced non-invasive characterization capabilities of high-energy synchrotron X-ray diffraction performed at the Advanced Photon Source (APS) of Argonne National Laboratory (ANL)—to create a comprehensive overview of each object’s manufacture as well as subsequent corrosion processes. Findings were also complemented with traditional non-invasive characterization techniques, including optical imaging, X-ray radiographic imaging, and X-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectrometry. The results—obtained without sampling—allow a clear distinction between genuinely ancient Chinese bronzes from those with modern restorations and from “archaistic” objects made many centuries later, in emulation of ancient styles.     

Current progress and future developments in sychrotron radiation instrumentation for high-pressure research including the esrf programme

Abstract

The field of synchrotron radiation instrumentation and techniques for high-pressure research is reviewed. Current state-of-the-art, recent developments, main directions of progress and areas with the greatest need for further developments are discussed. Large volume devices, diamond-anvil cells, temperature variation, detectors, all diffraction techniques and dispersive x-ray absorption are covered. Theplanned ESRF high-pressure facilities and programme are presented.     

The Industrial Research Program at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility: The Past,the Present,and Challenges for the Future

The challenge of harnessing the power of third-generation synchrotron sources for industrial R&D has been taken up by the ESRF ever since the first users arrived in 1994. However, working with industry has its own special requirements, and often mismatches and clashes between a traditional scientific “ivory tower” culture and the needs of the market-driven commercial world. After more than 15 years of industrial research at the ESRF, during which strong industrial programs in protein crystallography and microtomography have been established, we continue to build bridges between the two worlds.     

Self-calibration of Silicon Photodiode in the Soft X Ray Spectral Range

Self-calibration experiment of silicon photodiodes in the soft X-ray spectral region of synchrotron radiation (50—2000eV) is carried out. Because of elimination of “dead region” and adoption of very thin SiO₂ layer as window of the silicon photodiode, a simple model can be used to analyze the process. Based on parameters measured by experiment, the quantum efficiency of the silicon photodiode is calculated, and the flux of incident synchrotron radiation is also obtained.     

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Medical application of synchrotron radiation (SR) is a fast-growing field of research. Since the advent of the angiography studies at SSRL first and then at NSLS in the U.S. in the 1990s, preclinical and clinical research protocols have been developed at Hasylab (Germany), Photon Factory (Japan), ELETTRA (Italia) and at the ESRF (France). Despite the fact that there are only a few dedicated beamlines in the world (two new ones are under construction at the Australian and Canadian synchrotrons), medical research is carried out in almost all synchrotron facilities.