EDITORIAL
5
June 2024 ESRFnews
Editor
Jon Cartwright
Email jonacartwright@
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Nick Brookes
Delphine Chenevier
Andy Fitch
Michael Krisch
Gema MartínezCriado
Joanne McCarthy
Edward Mitchell
Stéphanie Monaco
Qing Qin
Francesco Sette
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ISSN 10119310
©2024 ESRF
ESRF
news
Pushing the frontiers of technology to advance science on the global scale has always
been at the heart of the ESRF’s missions. In 2024, the ESRF celebrates 30 years of
operation in User Service Mode (USM) – first user experiments began back in 1994!
2024 also marks the fourth year since the successful launch of operation of the ESRF’s
new Extremely Brilliant Source (EBS), the first of a new concept of synchrotron that
is lighting the way for many projects worldwide.
Indeed, in April this year, the upgraded
Advanced Photon Source (APS) in the USA,
a “sister” project inspired by the ESRF’s EBS,
reported its first stored beam. This new
achievement reaffirms a veritable leap forward in
progress and our capacity to overcome many of
the technological limitations that were thought
impossible a few years ago. It also demonstrates the
pioneering role of the ESRF to drive development
for the benefit of the scientific community at large,
thus opening new vistas for synchrotron science to
address the complex and global challenges facing
our society, such as health issues, climate change,
energy and environmental concerns.
This edition of ESRFnews showcases the increasing amount of science carried out
using the new capabilities of ESRF–EBS, including CO
2
reduction studies (p12),
the research on room-temperature superconductors (p17), and the in-depth X-ray
investigations of the legendary “Il Cannone”, historical virtuoso Paganini’s favourite
violin (p9). These scientific outputs are just some of the many exciting examples
of science at the ESRF, and demonstrate the growing interest of the scientific
community in using EBS for their research. And we are just at the beginning…
Pioneering synchrotron science
Francesco Sette
ESRF director-
general
Opening new vistas
for synchrotron
science to address
the complex and
global challenges
facing our society