Published 12th February 2020
The first X-rays have been beamed into the ESRF’s Experimental Hall – an important milestone in the EBS commissioning phase that has been achieved almost one month ahead of schedule!
On 30 January 2020, after reaching stable operation conditions of the EBS storage ring with 100 mA injection current, 65% injection efficiency and steady vacuum conditioning, 26 out of 27 Insertion Device beamlines opened their front-ends with 5 mA of stored electron beam current.
The EBS X-ray beam – on all these beamlines, at distances from the source varying from 45 to 160 m, depending on the specific beamline – was found within fractions of millimetres from its position as measured in December 2018 before the start of the shutdown.
On all beamlines, the X-ray beam was found within fractions of millimetres of its original position. Photo: D. Chenevier/ESRF.
“The beam shape is extremely good and almost cylindrical as expected, with sub-millimetre size at 100 m from the source! X-rays are shining again in the ESRF Experimental Hall!” said Francesco Sette, ESRF Director General.
“This has never been seen before,” said Harald Reichert, ESRF Director of Research. “We’ve taken out a 1km long machine, we have put a new one in and we have 5km of beamlines to align. And it is working straight away, which is pretty amazing.”
“This shows how the teams have worked in tune with each other to accomplish a real feat,” added Jean Susini, ESRF Director of Research. “We are especially very grateful to the alignment group for a perfect job!”
The commissioning continues, with the restart of the Experimental Programme on 2 March 2020.