Status update of the ESRF’s Extremely Brilliant Source project to design and build a low-emittance, high-brilliance storage ring, replacing the existing one.
The ESRF – the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility – is a user facility in Grenoble, France, and the source 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 light provides opportunities for scientists all over the world. In 2019, the existing storage ring will be removed and a first-of-a-kind new lattice, based on an innovative arrangement of magnets, will be installed in its place, dramatically reducing the equilibrium horizontal emittance. This ‘fourth-generation’ synchrotron will produce an X-ray beam 100 times more brilliant and coherent than the ESRF source today, allowing imaging down from the micrometre to the nanometre scale and ‒ in parallel with upgraded beamlines, instrumentation and data infrastructure ‒ providing new opportunities for science applications.
The ESRF ‒ Extremely Brilliant Source (EBS) project was launched in 2015 and in now well underway, on track for its scheduled completion in 2020. The design is completed, the procurement in the delivery phase, the assembly will soon be started, and critical installation activities are being prepared. The different phases of the project, starting from the white paper, will be presented.
It’s current status, two years into the project, will be revealed, along with the expected performance of the accelerator and the technical challenges involved. The specificity of the EBS project, consisting of the reconstruction of a full storage ring of a running facility, using the existing infrastructure including the injector, will be highlighted. Its timely implementation will allow the ESRF to lead synchrotron science on a global level, remain at the forefront of technology, and allow users to benefit from the gains in brilliance and coherence provided by the new X-ray source.
