Canadian synchrotron

The light is on at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, home of the Canadian Light Source, now being tested and debugged, with the first beamline expected to be fully operational by the end of the year.

Advances in the storage-ring magnets and in the undulators that determine the output wavelengths allow 3-GeV-class synchrotrons like the CLS to produce x-ray beams that are almost as bright as those created at light sources of twice the energy, but at a fraction of the size and cost. At Can$174 million (US$148 million), including the first seven research beamlines, the CLS was a bargain; it’s also Canada’s largest investment in a research facility in three decades.

Six beamlines are now being tested, and the 171-meter-circumference machine is intended to eventually have more than 30, with photon energies ranging from 1.2 meV to 40 keV. For higher energies, researchers still have to go to the bigger synchrotrons.