ESRF-EBS highlighted in Nature’s Communications Physics

Authored by more than 40 ESRF engineers and scientists, this reference article reports in detail the key aspects characterising the ESRF’s Extremely Brilliant Source (EBS), from the conception of the novel Hybrid Multi Bend Achromat (HMBA) storage ring magnetic lattice to its successful commissioning and operation. It highlights the innovative aspects of the HMBA design compared to previous designs, reports on the significant improvements in key beam parameters and demonstrates how, nearly three years after the start of operation, ESRF-EBS extends the reach of synchrotron X-ray science, with the first exciting scientific results confirming the HMBA concept for facility upgrades and new constructions.

As reported in the paper, modern X-ray science endeavours to provide unique tools and methods to understand the complexity of matter from the single atom to the macroscopic scale. Developing materials for cleaner energy production and storage, and understanding life from proteins to working cells and organs are some of the themes at the heart of today’s challenges for humankind, and addressing them is key to construct a new sustainable world, reducing environmental impact, mitigating climate change and overcoming diseases and pandemics.

In this context, the ambitious goals of 21st century science - as, for example, amply discussed in the UNESCO objectives of the next decade and in the Next Generation EU programmes of the European Commission - often refer to the need to understand and visualise the hierarchical static and dynamic organisation of complex and functionalised matter with full continuity, from macroscopic objects down to interactions among aggregates of a few atoms. Some of these concepts are at the basis of the 2021 Nobel prize in physics, and match precisely the objectives of today’s X-ray science at modern synchrotrons and X-ray free electron laser facilities: the aim to bridge gaps between visible light and electron microscopy and other structure-of-matter characterisation tools. Thanks to outstanding improvements in brilliance, spectral range and degree of spatial and temporal coherence, X-ray science using synchrotron sources plays a fundamental role in these advances.

The EBS represents a major advance in accelerator science and engineering in the field of synchrotron radiation research, confirming the solidity and the capabilities of the HMBA design, which was invented by Pantaleo Raimondi, and developed by Pantaleo Raimondi and the ESRF Beam Dynamics Group. Its performance is already opening new opportunities in X-ray science, with impressive first scientific results in vital fields including sub-cellular imaging of human organs and time-resolved serial crystallography, enabling the development of new drugs and new strategies in addressing disease.

Another application is the study of new materials for a circular economy or sustainable energy production and storage, where the need for following the relevant processes under in situ and operando conditions, from the atomic to the device scale, calls for new X-ray measurement protocols and approaches. On the more fundamental side, the availability of nanometric, high-energy X-ray beams opens the road into unchartered territories of extreme conditions, with investigations of materials at terapascal static pressures, as they are prevalent in the larger planets of the solar system as well as in most of the exoplanets discovered so far.

Reference
The Extremely Brilliant Source storage ring of the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility, P. Raimondi et al., Commun. Phys. 6, 82 (2023); https://doi.org/10.1038/s42005-023-01195-z