From the Correspondents: Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, Advanced Light Source

News from Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, Advanced Light Source

Due to the installation and commissioning of superconducting bend magnets (superbends) into sectors 4, 8, and 12, the Advanced Light Source (ALS) at Berkeley National Lab was shut down temporarily starting on August 20 and will be unavailable to users until October 3. The superbends will allow the ALS to accommodate up to 12 new beamlines suitable for research programs such as protein crystallography, which require high flux and brightness at higher energies than those provided by existing bend magnets. Time for beamline realignment has been scheduled for October 1-3, replacing several shifts originally scheduled for users. Any missed shifts will be made up during the next running period.

Going into its third week of the shutdown, things were proceeding exceptionally well. All three superbend magnets were installed and aligned two days ahead of the planned schedule, electrical and water connections had been completed, and the controls and monitoring systems had been tested. Now the ALS is in its critical commissioning period, in which the accelerator is adjusted to function with the new magnets.