“With the upgrade, measurements that used to last minutes or hours will now take seconds or even fractions of seconds. The APS beamlines produce the science - individualized techniques, all a little bit different, all producing world class research,” Winarski said. “The APS storage ring produces the X-rays. Some components are so sophisticated that they require years of engineering development and intricate fabrication techniques. In addition to those, all the existing beamlines at the APS will receive new components to make use of the brighter beams.īoth the new and existing beamlines will receive the latest generation of specialized optics and instruments to optimize and measure the X-ray beams, said Robert Winarski, an Argonne physicist who is the beamline installation coordinator for the upgrade. The upgraded APS will also have a series of new feature beamlines, all of which were developed based on the needs of the scientific community. The magnets, along with improvements in power systems and materials over the past few years, allow for a smaller and more focused electron beam, producing brighter light. The design features reverse-bending magnets that occasionally draw the electron stream slightly to the left and away from its normally rightward-veering course around the storage ring, creating a beneficial “wiggle” in the beam. But strength accounts for only part of the upgraded machine’s power. The new storage ring will incorporate 1,321 magnets, many stronger than the departing ones. These beams of photons are channeled into 68 experiment stations, called beamlines, at the facility, each tuned to a enable a specific type of scientific experiment. The APS works by circulating electrons around the storage ring, where they are steered and the electron beam is focused by magnets of various types. At certain locations around the ring, the electron beam bends, causing it to emit photons, which are particles of light. With the upgrade, measurements such as these could be done in a few hours, so experiments that are not even considered now will become routine in the future.” “But the APS is in such high demand that researchers rarely get this much time for experiments. “Some of the questions scientists would like to answer would require experiments that would take weeks to carry out,” Lang said. During the day, however, you can instantly detect many of the leaf’s features, from its veins and texture to a tiny insect crawling on the surface.īrighter beams and state-of-the-art equipment will enable science that simply cannot be done today, according to Jonathan Lang, director of the X-ray Science Division ( XSD) at Argonne. In darkness, eventually you would make out the leaf’s contours and color. How? Imagine trying to observe a leaf on a moonless night versus during the daytime, says Jim Kerby, APS Upgrade project director. The increase in APS brightness, along with an array of new and updated experiment stations, will make it easier and faster to conduct a wide range of science at the APS. (Video by Argonne National Laboratory.) Brighter = Faster The next phase will see the new components from Building 981 - preassembled into 200 modules weighing up to 50,000 pounds each - moved in this summer, when installation will begin in earnest. This phase of the project is now complete. That required first dismantling the existing storage ring, which spanned about two-thirds of a mile around. The APS’s powerful engines shut down on April 24, to make way for this new machine, called a storage ring, which circulates electrons in order to deliver X-ray beams up to 500 times brighter than the current one. Now comes a moment more than a decade in the making. “The APS Upgrade opens up possibilities that could not be envisioned till now.” - Suresh Narayanan, Argonne Physicist These and many other breakthroughs have resulted from the APS’s ability to illuminate the otherwise invisible. The drug Paxlovid, devised to treat COVID-19, emerged from work at the APS. Since it began operating in the mid-1990s, the APS has enabled advances in the fields of medicine, energy, climate, physics and more. More than 5,500 scientists in a typical year use the APS for its intensely bright X-ray beams. This new machine is part of a comprehensive upgrade to the facility, one that will set it at the forefront of global X-ray science for decades to come. Department of Energy ( DOE) Office of Science user facility at DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory. Inside, a multitalented team assembles the building blocks of a complicated yet elegant machine, one that will sit at the heart of the Advanced Photon Source ( APS), a U.S. Once a warehouse, Building 981 is now a workshop - an extremely sophisticated one. Over the past three years, thousands of machine parts have been delivered to a low-slung, deceptively plain building in Lemont, Illinois.
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