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F A C T S A N D F I G U R E S

User Operation

We look back on user operation over the year 2023, which has seen most of the ESRF portfolio of beamlines functioning at full speed. The ID06-HXM side station ceased user operation in October 2022 for transfer to ID03, the new EBSL beamline for hard X-ray microscopy, which expects its first users in the first half of 2024; in its current form, the biomedical beamline ID17 took its last users in July. The French CRG beamlines BM30 (FAME) and BM32 (IF) both underwent refurbishment programmes that saw reduced user operation in 2023.

Figure 141 shows the evolution of the number of applications for beamtime since 2016. Since the dark period for users in 2019-2020 due to the ESRF-Extremely Brilliant Source (EBS) upgrade, beamline operation has ramped up to pre-EBS levels following the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2023, nearly 1000 proposals were allocated beamtime, the second highest level of allocation in ESRF history. The exceptionally high number of proposals received in 2016-2018 prior to the EBS shutdown has returned to a more reasonable level of around 2000 per year thanks, in part, to the implementation of a number of community access proposals. Proposals for experiments are selected via peer review by 12 Beam Time Allocation Panels (BTAPs), composed of specialists mainly from ESRF member states and scientific associate countries. These panels review proposals for a subset of beamlines, as listed on page 190. Table 7 lists the scientific areas of the ESRF research activities reviewed by these 12 panels.

The BTAPs met twice to review the requests for beamtime, around six weeks after the deadlines for submission of proposals (10 September 2022 for beamtime in 2023/I and 1 March 2023 for beamtime in 2023/II). They reviewed 1951 applications, of which 988 were selected for allocation of beamtime (50.6%). In total, the requests for beamtime in 2023 (which is scheduled in shifts of eight hours) totalled 27 456 shifts, of which 14 223 shifts were allocated (51.8%). The distribution of shifts requested and allocated by scientific area for 2023 is shown in Table 7, while the number of shifts requested, allocated and delivered per year since 2016 is shown in Figure 142. The data for delivered shifts in 2023 include experiments up to 31 December 2023, and so are not yet complete since the 2023/II operation period finishes on 1 March 2024.

SCIENTIFIC FIELD TOTAL SHIFTS REQUESTED

TOTAL SHIFTS ALLOCATED

Chemistry 4 404 1 989

Earth Sciences 2 305 1 157

Environment 846 273

Hard Condensed Matter Science 5 744 2 812

Cultural Heritage 378 232

Life Sciences 1 790 996

Applied Materials Science 5 394 2 212

Medicine 452 294

Engineering 577 279

Methods & Instrumentation 375 192

Structural Biology 3 682 3 064

Soft Condensed Matter 1 509 723

Totals 27 456 14 223

Table 7: Shifts of beamtime requested and allocated for public user experiments, year 2023.

Fig. 141: Numbers of proposals, experimental sessions and user visits, 2016 to 2023. N.B. 2023 experiments and user visit figures are up to 31 December 2023; they do not include the experiments that will continue to be scheduled in the remainder of 2023/II (in Jan/Feb 2024).