The Australian Synchrotron under construction in Melbourne is due to begin operation in April 2007. This third-generation light source is an electron-accelerator laboratory comprising a full-energy injection system (linac plus booster synchrotron) and a 3 GeV storage ring. It has the capacity for more than 30 beamlines, with nine to be built in the first phase of facility development.
Although Australia has a long and distinguished history in nuclear and particle physics, the Australian Synchrotron is the largest accelerator in the country and the only one of its type in the Antipodes. The storage ring has a circumference of 216 m and is housed in a building with office and laboratory space for more than 100 staff and beamline users.
Commissioning of the injection system is well under way, with the 100 MeV linac now in routine operation. The first turn in the booster was achieved in February, rapidly followed by hundreds of thousands of turns. The beam has been stored at 100 MeV for 1 s from one injection to the next. The injection system ramps at a rate of 1 Hz to accelerate the beam from 100 MeV to 3 GeV in a few hundred milliseconds. Conditioning of the booster RF system is under way and the electron beam will soon be accelerated to full energy.
Installation of the storage ring is almost complete, with only a few of the magnets and vacuum chambers left to assemble. The klystrons that will provide the RF power to the storage-ring accelerating cavities are being commissioned on site during March and will be ready for the first injected beam, which is scheduled for June. The front ends that interface the beamlines to the storage ring are being installed, while beamline installation is due to start in December. Beamline commissioning with photons on sample is expected to be well under way by March 2007.
The Australian science community recommended consideration of an initial suite of 13 beamlines to cover almost the whole range of research being done in Australia, aiming to meet 95% of the anticipated needs of the Australian Synchrotron research community. Nine of these are being developed now, and others will be developed as funding allows. Contracts have been awarded for beamlines for powder diffraction, protein crystallography, X-ray absorption spectroscopy, infrared spectroscopy and soft X-ray spectroscopy beamlines, and the infrared spectroscopy beamline contract is imminent. 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.
The accelerator systems and building were funded entirely by the Victorian State government at a cost of AU$157 m. The beamlines are being funded through a partnership to which state governments, leading universities, research institutions and the New Zealand government have already committed AU$40 m.
Further reading
J W Boldeman and D Einfeld 2004 Nucl. Instr. and Meth. A 521 306.
