This is our last update of 2024, and what a year it has been. In appreciation of the season, I thought we might rouse the spirit of Charles Dickens and take a look at the past, the present and the future of the APS.
As 2024 began, we had installed the final modules of the new Advanced Photon Source (APS) storage ring and were beginning to button it up and prepare for commissioning. It's hard to believe that it's only been 12 months since then, as we started commissioning the ring in April; demonstrated the first successful multi-bunch swap-out injection a few weeks later; delivered our first X-rays to a scientific beamline in June; and set a world record for horizontal electron beam emittance in August.
This is all a testament to the hundreds of people here and in the Department of Energy who dreamed of an upgraded APS more than a decade ago and worked to make it a reality. This has been a year of celebration — in fact, we held a dedication in July — and of taking the new machine out for a spin, and so far the results are exemplary.
If you want a true ghost of the APS past, check out this work of art. It's a sculpture created by our friends at Thomas Jefferson National Laboratory in Virginia and is made out of extra vacuum chamber components from the original APS storage ring. The original modules were sent to Jefferson Lab and Brookhaven National Laboratory so that some of the magnets can be reused in their Electron-Ion Collider project.
Looking around now, the APS is in a transitional state. With the beam up and running, we've been bringing beamlines online one by one and welcoming users back to the facility to run first experiments. As you can see on the chart below, we now have more than 40 beamlines in some stage of commissioning, and more than 20 that are ready for early experiments. At the same time, we’re in the midst of construction on several of our feature beamlines, so the experiment floor is a busy place.
Of course, beginning next week, not a creature will be stirring as we enter our winter shutdown. The second user run of the upgraded APS era begins in late January, and we’ll be spending the next month fine-tuning the new accelerator and preparing additional beamlines for commissioning.
What lies ahead for the APS in 2025? On our end, we plan to finish up the APS Upgrade project in the summer, with seven feature beamlines in operation and critical infrastructure in place for two more. We will then prepare to construct those final two — 3DMN and Atomic — and bring in new technology to further enhance the new machine’s capabilities.
But the future of the APS, in large part, is up to you, the users. We've endeavored to provide the brightest light and the best tools for your scientific explorations, and we’re very much looking forward to seeing how far you can take them. While we have some idea of the areas the upgraded APS will shed its light upon, we expect your imagination to surprise us and your experiments to open up new possibilities.
It's all waiting for us in the new year, and I hope you all enjoy the holiday season with your loved ones. And then I hope to see you all at the APS in 2025 and beyond, as we write the future together.
Sincerely,
Jonathan Lang
