The Scene

Synchrotron radiation, which is electromagnetic radiation emitted during the acceleration of charged high energy particles (electrons and positrons), has been in use for a long time. It was first generated in the bending magnets of accelerators built for high energy particle physics research. Particle physics accelerators were soon inadequate to meet the increasing demand for synchrotron radiation within the scientific community. Dedicated storage rings and associated instrumentation with enhanced performance characteristics were then constructed in Europe, Asia and the USA. During this period it became apparent that the brilliance of a source could be tremendously increased by introducing magnetic insertion devices in the storage ring ("undulators" and "wigglers"). The results were such that third generation sources, based essentially on such insertion devices, were proposed in various places. For the soft X-ray and ultraviolet range, an energy of less than 2 GeV is sufficient and they are built on a national scale. To achieve wavelengths of several tenths of an angström providing the radiation indispensable for certain areas of physics, chemical and biological research, higher energy is required. Three hard X-ray facilities were built and are now in operation: Spring8 (Nishi Harima/Japan 8 GeV), APS (Argonne/USA 7 GeV), ESRF (Grenoble/France 6 GeV). In the case of the ESRF, European co-operation was needed for the construction of such a facility in view of its complexity, cost and experimental potential.

Conceptual phase

1975: H. MAIER-LEIBNITZ presided over a working group set up by the European Science Foundation (ESF) to study the feasibility of a machine to span the entire X-ray region up to wavelengths to the order of 0.1 Å. The machine would require an energy of 5 to 7 GeV.

1977: The ESF issued a report -"Synchrotron Radiation . A perspective view for Europe" (Black Book)- indicating the benefits of such a facility. Information was given about the desired technical parameters, costs and scheduling.

1978-1979: An ad-hoc Committee (l) was set up and chaired by Y. FARGE. Two subgroups were established, one dedicated to the machine (chaired by D.J. Thompson) and one dedicated to instrumentation (chaired by B. Buras), and extensive inquiries made among the European scientific community. This work resulted in the publication of "European Synchrotron Radiation Facility . The Feasibility Study" (a four volume document called the Blue Book), which outlined the main features of the future European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF).

Pre-foundation phase

1980-1982: An intergovernmental ESRF Progress Committee (2) was formed with P. LEVAUX as its chairman. In the meantime, the work of the machine and instrumentation subgroups continued under the auspices of the ESF ad-hoc committee with the aim of incorporating new technological developments and experience gained by synchrotron radiation users. An updated document "A case for a European Synchrotron Radiation Facility" (Yellow Book, ed. J. Als-Nielsen et al.) was presented to the Progress Committee, indicating the specifications for the facility taking into account the most recent technological advances (devices to be inserted in the straight sections).

1983-1984: A European Synchrotron Radiation Project group was created under the leadership of B. BURAS and S. TAZZARI and located at CERN. Its conclusions were given in "European Synchrotron Radiation Facility - Report of the ESRP" (Green Book) which described the project goals (including industrial applications), the source, experimental equipment, time scale, cost and general construction requirements.

1985: France and the Federal Republic of Germany proposed the implementation of the project in France and agreed to assume a major share of the financing. They invited other countries to join.

1986-1987: The Foundation Phase began on 10 December 1985 with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) by France, the Federal Republic of Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom and Spain. The provisional ESRF Council and several subcommittees were formed. The Council set up the construction team in Grenoble, led by R. HAENSEL as Director General, which grew to 55 staff members by the end of 1987. The teams task was to refine the design of the machine, prepare the construction drawings, test the quality of different sites in Grenoble, revise the experimental programme and make cost estimations for the construction and operation phases. The scientific, technical and financial data were reported in the "Foundation Phase Report" (Red Book), adopted by the ESRF Council in 1987 as the central planning document for the ESRF. At the same time, a working group prepared the texts of the Convention and Statutes as the legal basis of the ESRF.

During the first few years the construction team was accommodated on the site of the Institute Laue-Langevin (ILL) and was supported by the services of the ILL, in particular its administrative services.

1988: The Foundation Phase ended with the signing of a protocol on 22 December 1987 by the five countries mentioned above, plus Switzerland and the four Nordic countries Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. This protocol called for the launching of the construction period from 1 January 1988, and approved a budget for 1988 amounting to 108 million French francs of payments plus 92 million FF of commitments. The construction team continued, in collaboration with other laboratories, to study elements of the machine and experimental devices and awarded the first large contracts (pre-injector, industrial architect).

The local authorities (the City of Grenoble, Isère Department, Rhône-Alpes Region) financed the essential site infrastructure work and provide large scale logistic support in order to make the land required for the ESRF available in November 1988. The nuclear research centre of the CEA (3) at Grenoble (Centre d'Etudes Nucléaires de Grenoble) and the principal local scientific institutes helped to complete this work by applying their respective skills. In addition to its temporary premises the ESRF took over a laboratory and office building from the CENG, the ground being added to the ESRF/ILL site.

The Council, under the chairmanship of J. HOROWITZ, conducted both the negotiations to prepare final versions of the Intergovernmental Convention and the Statutes of the ESRF and to enable Belgium to join the organisation. On 16 December 1988, The ESRF agreements were signed in Paris by the research ministers of the following eleven countries: Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and, acting jointly as a single contracting party NORDSYNC, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. On 12 November 1990 Belgium and The Netherlands formed a consortium, BENESYNC, aimed at their joint participation in the ESRF project. The "Protocol of Accession by the Kingdom of the Netherlands to the ESRF Convention" was signed on 9 December 1991, providing for the joint participation of both countries to be effective from the beginning of the construction period.

Realisation of the project

1989: The ESRF company (société civile) was established on 12 January 1989. Building contract A (excavation, drainage and sewers) was executed between February and September. Building contract B (Machine utility buildings, storage ring tunnel, experimental hall, technical utility buildings) was signed on 1 December 1989. An internal reorganisation of the ESRF lead to the present structure of five divisions: Machine, Experiments, Technical Services, Computing Services, Administration.

1990: In April construction work started on the site whilst 60 % of equipment for the accelerator had already been ordered. The installation of the booster synchrotron started in November. Building contract C (central building for laboratories and offices, joint ILL / ESRF building, landscaping) was signed in December. The ESRF staff complement being determined by the later requirements of operation, many of the construction tasks were contracted out. In order to cover the needs for additional highly qualified personnel during the build up phase the Council allowed the temporary recruitment of "peak load manpower", i.e. extra staff detached, for a fixed term, from institutes in the Member countries).

1991: The pre-injector (linear accelerator) was delivered at the beginning of 1991, the first electron beam was accelerated in it in May. In August/September the commissioning of the booster synchrotron started with a first beam around the machine on the first day and an acceleration to 3 GeV a couple of days later. On 12 November the ESRF injector reached its operational energy of 6 GeV for the first time.

Experiments by an ESRF/NSLS team at the National Synchrotron Light Source, Brookhaven (USA) confirmed the potential of cryo-cooled silicon single crystal monochromators to preserve the high brilliance of the ESRF's X-ray beams.

At the end of the year all the technical buildings were completed. The initial construction programme referred to a facility with 30 beamlines, essentially on insertion devices as radiation sources. However, the storage ring provides the potential for further beamlines to be built on bending magnets. The Council agreed that groups from research institutes based in the contracting party countries could use this bending magnet radiation and adopted "General conditions for beamlines established at the ESRF by Collaborating Research Groups". Shortly afterwards, contracts for the construction of four CRG beamlines and a special high energy physics experiment were concluded.

1992: Electrons were injected into the storage ring for the first time on 17 February 1992. Eleven days later the machine team succeeded in getting electrons circulate. In June the target value for the current of the stored beam (100mA) was achieved. The first undulator trials in July confirmed the high beam stability and record brightness. By November all the target values for the storage ring (e.g. lifetime, brilliance, stability) were achieved or exceeded. At the first three user beamlines, installed during the autumn of 1992, components were tested with X-ray beam. Since the slabs of the experimental hall floor had not met the specification with regard to vibration, studies and tests were carried out throughout the year in order to find a method for recovering the necessary stability of the floor.

A post-doctoral programme was established. The ESRF and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) set up a framework for collaboration in the form of a Memorandum of Understanding with reference to which several agreements were subsequently concluded. In May the fence separating the construction site from the ESRF's temporary premises was dismantled and the joint ESRF/ILL site thus realised. In December ESRF staff moved into the new central building.

1993: Y. PETROFF took up his tasks as the new Director General on 1 January. The storage ring was complemented by further insertion devices and front-ends and the quality of operation of the machine and its performance continuously increased over the year. The Council decided to install a High Quality Power Supply in order to prevent beam losses due to voltage drops on the mains (frequent during thunderstorms). On the other hand, the option to run the storage ring with positrons (instead of electrons) could be dropped since the originally feared problem of beam life time suffering from positive ions in the vacuum chamber did not materialize. The experimental hall floor was repaired by the injection of grout into the sub-soil under the slabs, a method which had previously been demonstrated as capable of providing the slabs with the required stability. This success enabled the continued installation of beamlines so that by the end of 1993 six ESRF beamlines (and four CRG beamlines) were commissioned with beam, whilst a further five were assembled. Several innovative devices for X-ray optics (quarter-wave plates, liquid nitrogen cooled Si monochromators, thin diamond single crystals as monochromators, Bragg-Fresnel lenses) were also successfully tested. In accordance with the beam time allocation policy adopted by the Council, six review committees were established. The Director General and the Unions signed the Collective Agreement and regulations for shift work.

1994: While the machine team was pushing the performances of the source beyond the initial target specifications and ensuring a high standard of reliability during user service operation, commissioning of the first set of beamlines entered its final phase. A satellite building for the first long beamline (Topography) was completed and construction work for a guest house and the building for the High Quality Power Supply started. Test experiments confirmed the extraordinary progress made possible by the ESRF in a large number of research areas, even in fields which had not been put forward when the scientific case for the ESRF was set out (for instance, coherent radiation with sufficient flux, very high pressure on light materials, inelastic scattering with very high resolution, surface magnetic scattering, focusing down to less than 1 µm). The beam time allocation procedure installed by the ESRF Council was implemented for the first time for the period September - December 1994. By June 1994 the scientific programme for the first 26 (of 30) ESRF beamlines had been determined, seven CRG beamlines (plus a special high energy physics experiment) had been approved and applications for another two were under investigation. In September 1994, the ESRF inauguration ceremony took place in the presence of research ministers and representatives from the twelve countries of the contracting parties.

1994-today: Parallel to the construction of further beamlines, regular user operation took place on those beamlines already completed. In 1995, 4752 hours of User Service Mode (USM) were scheduled and delivered with an average availability of 92.9%. The corresponding numbers for 1996 and 1997 being 5194 hours at 94.4% availability and 5168 hours at 93.5% availability, respectively. At the end of 1997, the number of operating beamlines had increased to 27 (ESRF) + 5 (CRG).

footnotes

(1) Scientists from Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, The Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom participated in the work of the ad hoc committee.

(2) The Progress Committee was composed of representatives of Austria, Belgium. Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom and Yugoslavia.

(3) Commissariat a l'Energie Atomique