Europe first with new x-ray source
A new era of high-luminosity synchrotron radiation has arrived in Europe - years before competing US and Japanese machines are due to start up. Researchers at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) in Grenoble have recently begun experiments using their machine's initial four beamlines, which now harbor some of the world's brightest x-rays. Preliminary results promise a rich scientific bounty for ESRF and two counterpart machines now under construction. The Advanced Photon Source (APS), due to begin operating in 1995 at the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois; and Japan's Spring-8, which should be ready by 1998. What distinguishes this third generation of synchrotron sources is the intensity of their x-rays - some two orders of magnitude brighter than previous machines could muster. Researchers have also produced the first ultra high-luminosity x-ray beams with wavelengths shorter than 0.5 angstroms. ESRF scientists have been quick to exploit this brilliance to carry out diffraction studies to determine the structures of compounds too complex for the resolving power of earlier machines. The researchers are also collaborating with Russian lithographers who have produced a Bragg-Fresnel optical device that can focus a high-intensity x-ray beam onto an area only one micrometer across - allowing the ultrastructure of fibers such as those in muscle to be probed with unparalleled resolution. Massimo Altarelli, one of ESRF's two research directors, predicts eight beamlines will open to outside users in the second half of 1994. That's good news for the expectant European research community. But the leaders of ESRF's competitor projects are similarly relieved about the success of ESRF's preliminary tests, since they provide the first demonstration that the technology underlying the new generation of synchrotrons actually works.
- OSTI ID:
- 6445848
- Journal Information:
- Science (Washington, D.C.); (United States), Vol. 259:5103; ISSN 0036-8075
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Related Subjects
BEAM LUMINOSITY
AUGMENTATION
HARD X RADIATION
EUROPE
FRESNEL LENS
MATERIALS TESTING
SYNCHROTRONS
X-RAY DIFFRACTION
ACCELERATORS
COHERENT SCATTERING
CYCLIC ACCELERATORS
DIFFRACTION
ELECTROMAGNETIC RADIATION
IONIZING RADIATIONS
LENSES
RADIATIONS
SCATTERING
TESTING
X RADIATION
070200* - Radiation Sources