Project of the Central European Synchrotron Laboratory (CESLAB)

Petr Mikulík

Department of Condensed Matter Physics, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic

This presentation will discuss the conceptual design of the new synchrotron radiation facility to be built in the Czech Republic – Central European Synchrotron Laboratory (CESLAB). The proposals for the experimental beamlines with their research fields, applications and the user base will be overviewed shortly in order to make step forward further presentation of the beamline coordinators and involved scientists and to promote further discussion among participating researchers.

Construction of this synchrotron facility has been proposed by the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic (ASCR) as one of the projects to be realized from the Structural Funds of the European Union. The CESLAB will be a modern third-generation electron synchrotron facility with energy of 3 GeV serving the Central Europe from year 2015. Due to the favourable geographical location of Brno, the facility will serve not only to the needs of the Czech science, research and industry, but also to the Central European partners from Slovakia, Austria, Hungary, and others.

The new synchrotron to be built in the Czech Republic in Brno will be the 3^rd generation source taking the best from the current state of the art of synchrotron physics and technology. The main facility will be based on the latest 3 GeV European synchrotron ALBA, currently under construction in Barcelona. The knowledge transfer, help and direct collaboration on the project planning and later on synchrotron construction has been agreed with the experienced team in ALBA with a support by the respective Czech and Spanish ministries. This considerably boosted preparation of the Conceptual Design Study of the accelerator complex.

From a technical point of view, the storage ring of diameter 270 m will consist of 24 straight sections for insertion devices for up to 33 beamlines. The top-up filling mode will ensure constant output flux. More details about the facility will be presented by the Z. Pokorná and B. Růžička in their contribution.

Czech scientists have a long tradition in research with synchrotron radiation and they have a lot of experience at running synchrotron experiments. The Czech Republic was the first from the central European countries joining the ESRF, the brightest European synchrotron. There is a successful Czech Materials Science beamline at synchrotron ELETTRA in Trieste – it will be presented at this workshop as well. In conjunction with the upgrade programme of the ESRF to continue its functionality as the most brilliant synchrotron source in Europe, only proposals of well-prepared and pretested applications will be accepted there. In general, in the Europe as everywhere in the world, the demand for beamtime is larger than the available measuring time. A new synchrotron will help to reduce this pressure. The current trend in the world is to provide fast access for urgent or cutting-edge applications, which is needed mainly for industrial applications. Further, the new source will enhance interest in physics and high technology, and it will serve the other new laboratories created in the Czech Republic from the Structural Funds. It will also allow young researcher easier come-back from their current positions at European synchrotrons. In summary, new synchrotron facility in the favourite location of Brno close to five central European countries will take care of all of these needs.

Beamlines are the heart of results at the synchrotron facility. They provide necessary equipment for the methods applied to different fields of research, such as biology and medicine, material science, chemistry, microtechnology and nanotechnology, environmental sciences, or archeology. Let us briefly overview the beamlines currently proposed for CESLAB. Macromolecular crystallography is a method for structure determination of molecules from diffraction patterns. Intense X-ray radiation of 1 Å wavelength is necessary for precise determination of complicated structures of large molecules such as proteins or viruses. Synchrotron set-ups are optimized for fast measurement of many standard samples as well as for using anomal diffraction for ab initio structure determination of complicated molecular complexes, to determine atom positions precisely, or for time-resolved studies. Transmission microscopy methods with soft X-rays in the water window range are used for imaging of biological samples or low-contrast materials by the phase imaging. Within hard X-rays the methods of microtomography and phase contrast are widely used for visualization of the inner structure of devices or materials with bulk characteristics. Powder diffraction is used for structure determination of powder materials (organic as well as anorganic), or microcrystallites and their structural changes in different environments. X-ray diffraction methods at small as well as large angles are widely used mainly because of the high intensity necessary for study of low-dimensional objects and nanostructures, for energy tuning and for beam size conditioning. LEEM and PEEM investigate both crystalline and electronic structure of surfaces as well as of processes connected with their dynamic phenomena by photoemission spectromicroscopy and spin polarized microscopy with slow electrons. Spectroscopy can be used in a whole range of methods, such as absorption or magnetic spectroscopy, synchrotron Mössbauer spectroscopy, or photoemission. At synchrotrons, it can probe samples continuously from hard X-rays through VUV downto IR radiation. Infrared methods for microscopy, ellipsometry and spectroscopy conducted at synchrotrons differ from those at laboratory mainly because of the high intensity and the full range of the IR spectrum. The methods allow to study conductive as well as semi-conductive materials, organics, biological tissues or piezo- and ferroelectrics. Chemical reactions in gas phase allow to understand reaction mechanisms and to study clusters, enzymes, etc., in (bio)organics and in analytical chemistry. The method utilizes photons from the VUV spectrum and sequent mass spectroscopy. Finally, a universal Optics beamline has been proposed in order to test new devices and instruments or for metrology of optical components. Further, this beamline can be used for a wide range of atypical or new experiments, and also for education of students or new users.

Considering the CESLAB project preparation, the first version of its Conceptual Design Study has been released in Spring 2008. Furthermore, a special issue of Materials Structure (vol. 15, no. 1a) has been issued in April 2008. Basic information about the project are presented there, accompanied by abstracts from the conference “Synchrotron Facilities for the Development of Science and Technology in Central and Eastern Europe” which took place in Brno in November 2007.

At this workshop, presentations of the synchrotron complex, machine physics, as well as of proposed beamlines and their science and applications will be presented.

More and current information about CESLAB is available at the addresses www.synchrotron.cz and www.ceslab.eu.

Figure 1. Architectural rendering of the proposed synchrotron.