Le Blanc and his team of scientists and engineers have already spent six weeks checking and rechecking the many systems, crunching the numbers and tweaking the energies, trying to maintain the beam. They have got close, achieving first one complete revolution of the outer storage ring, then 20, then Nearing the end of another long night, at 3.
This is the moment they have been waiting for. First light is the moment when the beam is kept in constant motion, generating high- energy X-rays and infrared light that can be used for scientific research. For the physicists and engineers on the project, first light confirms that the entire chain of precision instruments is perfectly lined up, allowing the beam to shine through. And it is no simple process to raise and maintain electrons to a speed at which they could travel around the Earth seven times in one second.
Keeping the beam alive The acceleration process starts with a giant electron gun which works not unlike the old cathode-ray-tube TV sets, using thermionic emission to extract electrons and aim them — at an energy of some 90, electron volts 90keV — into a linear accelerator.
Within just a few metres this uses electromagnetic radiation in the form of radio frequencies to accelerate the electrons to an energy of MeV, already very close to the speed of light. They are then focused, to prevent the beam expanding outward, and pass into a booster ring metres in circumference, where 60 steering and focusing electromagnets keep the electrons inside the stainless steel vacuum chamber while a 5-cell radio-frequency cavity — metallic chambers containing an electromagnetic field — provide an electrical impulse that accelerates them further.
An electron spends only around half a second in the booster ring, completing over one million laps to achieve a final energy of 3GeV. Once at their top speed the electrons pass into a storage ring metres in circumference, where they can typically be maintained for up to 20 hours if everything is kept in perfect alignment.
When high-energy electrons are forced to travel in a circular orbit in this way, they release extremely intense radiation. Synchrotron light scores over conventional techniques in terms of accuracy, quality, robustness and the level of detail that can be seen and collected; it can also be much faster than traditional methods.
Often described as being like an enormously powerful microscope, the synchrotron light reveals the innermost, sub-macroscopic secrets of materials from human tissue to plants to metals and more. This end station is well suited to time resolved and in sit u experiments as well as more traditional powder diffraction geometries and experiments. The Macromolecular Crystallography MX beamlines are general purpose crystallography instruments for determining chemical and biological structures The MX1 beamline is a bending-magnet beamline with stability and ease of use for high-throughput crystallography projects.
The MX2 beamline is a finely-focused in-vacuum undulator equipped with a microcollimator. It is ideal for weakly-diffracting, hard-to-crystallise proteins, viruses, protein assemblies and nucleic acids as well as smaller molecules such as inorganic catalysts and organic drug molecules.
X-ray absorption spectroscopy XAS is a versatile tool for chemistry, biology, and materials science. By probing how x rays are absorbed from core electrons of atoms in a sample, the technique can reveal the local structure around selected atoms.
The X-ray Fluorescence Microscopy XFM beamline has the ability to map a range of elements of interest at low concentrations and at high resolution in a range of samples, from biological, geological, cultural heritage to industrial materials. To find out more about our capabilities or to discuss your specific requirements. Impact The Australian Synchrotron is a major research facility located in Clayton, a technology and innovation hub of southeast Melbourne. How it works In simple terms, a synchrotron is a very large, circular, gigavolt technology about the size of a football field.
What is synchrotron light? Read more. Applications Fundamental and applied research conducted at the Australian Synchrotron brings improvements in human health, leads to the development of new materials and technologies, contributes to environmental sustainability and solves problems for industry.
Beamline instruments. Find out more. Powder Diffraction beamline The Powder Diffraction beamline can accommodate a wide variety of experiments, particularly those utilising non-standard sample stages and cells.
Macromolecular Crystallography beamlines The Macromolecular Crystallography MX beamlines are general purpose crystallography instruments for determining chemical and biological structures The MX1 beamline is a bending-magnet beamline with stability and ease of use for high-throughput crystallography projects.
X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy beamline X-ray absorption spectroscopy XAS is a versatile tool for chemistry, biology, and materials science. X-ray Fluorescence Microscopy beamline The X-ray Fluorescence Microscopy XFM beamline has the ability to map a range of elements of interest at low concentrations and at high resolution in a range of samples, from biological, geological, cultural heritage to industrial materials.
Designs are well advanced for small- and wide-angle scattering, microspectroscopy and imaging, and medical therapy beamlines, as is design of a second protein-crystallography beamline that will also cater for small-molecule research.
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News Australian synchrotron shines new light in the Southern Hemisphere 28 March
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