The reliability and high performance of the accelerator complex producing the X-ray beams has been a key element of the ESRF’s success. The first phase of the Upgrade includes the following developments to maintain its capabilities at the forefront:

• An improved beam position diagnostics system, installed already in 2009, providing higher beam stability and reduced vertical emittance.
• Increasing the useful length of the straight sections for undulators to six metres. This is possible with the current lattice and will make space available for more undulators and/or for the implementation of canted undulators in selected straight sections.
• A new RF power source based on semiconductor technology will replace some of the klystron based transmitters. This new RF power source is a more modern and more stable alternative to the aging high power klystron technology and will ease the switch over to the top-up mode of operation of the injector.
• Improved RF cavities with higher-order-mode damping will replace the presently aging RF cavities, the design of which dates from the 1980s. The technology of higher-order-mode damping is of interest to many synchrotrons in the world. At the ESRF, it will enable the beam current to be increased to 300 mA.

This Upgrade will push the accelerators and X-ray source to limits beyond the most optimistic expectations at the time of their design. An overriding objective of all improvements is to continue the track record of excellent X-ray beam availability and stability which are among the best in the world.

The Upgrade Programme will make it possible to install more and longer undulators (pink) in the straight sections between the focusing magnets (green and red) and bending magnets (view larger image).   Next page: Synchrotron radiation instrumentation