ANSTO's Australian Synchrotron is a 3

GeV GEV may refer to: * ''G.E.V.'' (board game), a tabletop game by Steve Jackson Games * Ashe County Airport, in North Carolina, United States * Gällivare Lapland Airport, in Sweden * Generalized extreme value distribution * Gev Sella, Israeli-Sou ...

national synchrotron radiation facility located in Clayton, in the south-eastern suburbs of

Melbourne Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a met ...

Victoria Victoria most commonly refers to: * Victoria (Australia), a state of the Commonwealth of Australia * Victoria, British Columbia, provincial capital of British Columbia, Canada * Victoria (mythology), Roman goddess of Victory * Victoria, Seychelle ...

, which opened in 2007. ANSTO's Australian Synchrotron is a

light source Light or visible light is electromagnetic radiation that can be perceived by the human eye. Visible light is usually defined as having wavelengths in the range of 400–700 nanometres (nm), corresponding to frequencies of 750–420 terah ...

facility (in contrast to a

collider A collider is a type of particle accelerator which brings two opposing particle beams together such that the particles collide. Colliders may either be ring accelerators or linear accelerators. Colliders are used as a research tool in particl ...

), which uses particle accelerators to produce a beam of high energy

electron The electron ( or ) is a subatomic particle with a negative one elementary electric charge. Electrons belong to the first generation of the lepton particle family, and are generally thought to be elementary particles because they have no ...

s that are boosted to nearly the speed of light and directed into a

storage ring A storage ring is a type of circular particle accelerator in which a continuous or pulsed particle beam may be kept circulating typically for many hours. Storage of a particular particle depends upon the mass, momentum and usually the charge of t ...

where they circulate for many hours or even days at a time. As the path of these electrons are deflected in the storage ring by either bending magnets or

insertion device An insertion device (ID) is a component in modern synchrotron light sources, so called because they are "inserted" into accelerator tracks. They are periodic magnetic structures that stimulate highly brilliant, forward-directed synchrotron radiati ...

s, they emit synchrotron light. The light is channelled to experimental endstations containing specialised equipment, enabling a range of research applications including high resolution imagery that is not possible under normal laboratory conditions. ANSTO's Australian Synchrotron supports the research needs of Australia's major universities and research centres, and businesses ranging from small-to-medium enterprises to multinational companies. During 2014-15 the Australian Synchrotron supported more than 4,300 researcher visits and close to 1,000 experiments in areas such as medicine, agriculture, environment, defence, transport, advanced manufacturing and mining. In 2015, the Australian Government announced a ten-year, million investment in operations through

ANSTO The Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) is a statutory body of the Australian government, formed in 1987 to replace the Australian Atomic Energy Commission. Its head office and main facilities are in southern outs ...

, Australia's Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation . In 2020, it was used to help map the

molecular structure Molecular geometry is the three-dimensional arrangement of the atoms that constitute a molecule. It includes the general shape of the molecule as well as bond lengths, bond angles, torsional angles and any other geometrical parameters that deter ...

of the

COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was identified in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. The disease quickly ...

virus, during the ongoing

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...

Accelerator systems

Electron gun

The electrons used to provide the synchrotron light are first produced at the

electron gun An electron gun (also called electron emitter) is an electrical component in some vacuum tubes that produces a narrow, collimated electron beam that has a precise kinetic energy. The largest use is in cathode-ray tubes (CRTs), used in nearly ...

, by

thermionic emission Thermionic emission is the liberation of electrons from an electrode by virtue of its temperature (releasing of energy supplied by heat). This occurs because the thermal energy given to the charge carrier overcomes the work function of the mater ...

from a heated metal cathode. The emitted electrons are then accelerated to an energy of 90 keV (kilo-

electron volt In physics, an electronvolt (symbol eV, also written electron-volt and electron volt) is the measure of an amount of kinetic energy gained by a single electron accelerating from rest through an electric potential difference of one volt in vacuum ...

s) by a 90 kilovolt potential applied across the gun and make their way into the linear accelerator.

Linear accelerator

The

linear accelerator A linear particle accelerator (often shortened to linac) is a type of particle accelerator that accelerates charged subatomic particles or ions to a high speed by subjecting them to a series of oscillating electric potentials along a linear ...

(or linac) uses a series of RF cavities, operating at a frequency of 3 GHz, to accelerate the electron beam to an energy of 100 MeV, over a distance of around 15 metres. Due to the nature of this acceleration, the beam must be separated into discrete packets, or 'bunches'. The bunching process is done at the start of the linac, using several 'bunching' cavities. The linac can accelerate a beam once every second. Further along the linac quadrupole magnets are used to help

focus Focus, or its plural form foci may refer to: Arts * Focus or Focus Festival, former name of the Adelaide Fringe arts festival in South Australia Film *''Focus'', a 1962 TV film starring James Whitmore * ''Focus'' (2001 film), a 2001 film based ...

the electron beam. Aust

Booster synchrotron

The booster is an electron synchrotron which takes the 100 MeV beam from the linac and increases its energy to 3 GeV. The booster ring is 130 metres in circumference and contains a single 5-cell RF cavity (operating at 500 MHz) which provides energy to the electron beam. Acceleration of the beam is achieved by a simultaneous ramping up of the magnet strength and cavity fields. Each ramping cycle takes approximately 1 second (for a complete ramp up and down).

Storage ring

The storage ring is the final destination for the accelerated electrons. It is 216 metres in circumference and consists of 14 nearly identical sectors. Each sector consists of a straight section and an arc, with the arcs containing two dipole 'bending' magnets each. Each dipole magnet is a potential source of synchrotron light and most straight sections can also host an

, giving the possibility of 30+ beamlines at the Australian Synchrotron. Two of the straight sections are used to host the storage ring 500 MHz RF cavities, which are essential for replacing the energy that the beam loses through synchrotron radiation. The storage ring also contains a large number of

quadrupole A quadrupole or quadrapole is one of a sequence of configurations of things like electric charge or current, or gravitational mass that can exist in ideal form, but it is usually just part of a multipole expansion of a more complex structure refl ...

and sextupole magnets used for beam focusing and

chromaticity Chromaticity is an objective specification of the quality of a color regardless of its luminance. Chromaticity consists of two independent parameters, often specified as hue (h) and colorfulness (s), where the latter is alternatively called ...

corrections. The ring is designed to hold 200 mA of stored current with a beam lifetime of over 20 hours.

Vacuum systems

The electron beam is kept within a very high vacuum at all times during the acceleration process and within the storage ring. This vacuum is necessary as any beam collisions with gas molecules will quickly degrade the beam quality and reduce the lifetime of the beam. The vacuum is achieved by enclosing the beam in a stainless steel pipe system, with numerous vacuum pump systems continually working to keep the vacuum quality high. Pressure within the storage ring is typically around 10⁻¹³ bar (10 nPa).

Control system

Each digital and analogue I/O channel is associated with a database entry in a customised distributed open source database system called

EPICS The Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System (EPICS) is a set of software tools and applications used to develop and implement distributed control systems to operate devices such as particle accelerators, telescopes and other large sci ...

(Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System). The condition of the system is monitored and controlled by connecting specialised

GUI The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, inste ...

s to the specified database entries. There are about 171,000 database entries (also known as process variables), many of which relate to the physical I/O. About 105,000 of these are permanently archived at intervals ranging from tenths of a seconds to minutes. Some high level control of the physics-related parameters of the beam is provided through

MATLAB MATLAB (an abbreviation of "MATrix LABoratory") is a proprietary multi-paradigm programming language and numeric computing environment developed by MathWorks. MATLAB allows matrix manipulations, plotting of functions and data, implementa ...

which also provides data analysis tools and an interface with a computerised model of the accelerator. Personnel and equipment protection is achieved through the use of PLC-based systems, which also transfer data to EPICS. The Beamlines also use EPICS as the basis for their control.

Australian Synchrotron beamlines

* Imaging and Medical Beamline (IMBL) * X-ray Fluorescence Microscopy (XFM) beamline * Macromolecular and Micro crystallography (MX1 and MX2) beamlines (

Protein crystallography X-ray crystallography is the experimental science determining the atomic and molecular structure of a crystal, in which the crystalline structure causes a beam of incident X-rays to diffract into many specific directions. By measuring the angles ...

) * Infrared microscopy (IRM) beamline * Far Infrared, THz Spectroscopy (THz) beamline * Soft

X-ray An X-ray, or, much less commonly, X-radiation, is a penetrating form of high-energy electromagnetic radiation. Most X-rays have a wavelength ranging from 10 picometers to 10 nanometers, corresponding to frequencies in the range 30&nb ...

Spectroscopy (SXR) beamline * Small and Wide Angle X-ray Scattering (SAXS/WAXS) beamline *

X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) is a widely used technique for determining the local geometric and/or electronic structure of matter. The experiment is usually performed at synchrotron radiation facilities, which provide intense and tunabl ...

(XAS) beamline * Powder diffraction (PD) beamline Beamlines under construction (as of 2021) * Micro Computed Tomography (MCT) * Medium Energy X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy (MEX1 and MEX2) * Biological Small Angle Scattering (BioSAXS) * Advanced Diffraction and Scattering (ADS1 and ADS2) * X-ray Fluorescence NanoProbe (Nano) * High Performance Macromolecular Crystallography (MX3)

References

External links

Australian Synchrotron website
*
Facility Status software
- updated every minute
ANSTO, Australia's Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation website

Lightsources - website about the world's synchrotrons

'The Australian Synchrotron is great... but what does it do?'
at
The Conversation
', March 2012.
Deconstruction of Australian Synchrotron
in ''symmetry'' magazine (

Fermilab Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), located just outside Batavia, Illinois, near Chicago, is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory specializing in high-energy particle physics. Since 2007, Fermilab has been opera ...

SLAC SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, originally named the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, is a United States Department of Energy National Laboratory operated by Stanford University under the programmatic direction of the U.S. Departme ...

), May 2006 {{authority control Research institutes in Australia Synchrotron radiation facilities Monash University 2007 establishments in Australia Buildings and structures in the City of Monash Research institutes established in 2007