Argonne's Advanced Photon Source

Argonne's Advanced Photon Source
Name	Advanced Photon Source
Caption	Aerial view of the Advanced Photon Source facility
Established	1995
Location	Lemont, Illinois, United States
Type	Synchrotron radiation facility
Director	Stephen Streiffer
Operator	Argonne National Laboratory

Argonne's Advanced Photon Source The Advanced Photon Source is a high-brightness synchrotron radiation facility located at Argonne National Laboratory in Lemont, Illinois, near Chicago. It provides intense X-ray beams for research in physics, chemistry, materials science, biology, and engineering, serving thousands of users from institutions such as University of Chicago, Northwestern University, University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign, and international laboratories including CERN, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The facility is funded and overseen by the United States Department of Energy and collaborates with agencies like the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation.

Overview

The Advanced Photon Source is a third-generation storage ring synchrotron that produces high-energy X-rays via insertion devices and bending magnets, enabling experiments in crystallography, spectroscopy, imaging, and scattering for researchers affiliated with MIT, Harvard University, Stanford University, Columbia University, and industrial partners such as General Electric and Ford Motor Company. The facility supports beamlines operated by national consortia including Consortium of Advanced Radiation Sources members and integrated projects with Brookhaven National Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Los Alamos National Laboratory. Its user program attracts investigators funded by programs like the Human Frontier Science Program and the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy.

History and development

Planning for the Advanced Photon Source began in the 1980s with input from stakeholders including Argonne National Laboratory, the Department of Energy, and advisory committees composed of scientists from Bell Labs, IBM, DuPont, and major universities such as Princeton University and Yale University. Construction, managed by contractors including Fluor Corporation and engineering teams from Bechtel, culminated in initial operations in 1995 and full user operation by the late 1990s. Over the decades the facility has hosted notable users like Ada Yonath, John Goodenough, and research groups associated with laureates from the Nobel Prize in Chemistry and the Wolf Prize in Physics.

Facility and instrumentation

The Advanced Photon Source complex includes a 7-GeV electron storage ring, linear accelerator and booster synchrotron, hundreds of meters of beamlines, and specialized endstations for techniques used by teams from Max Planck Society, The Scripps Research Institute, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and various corporate research labs. Instrumentation comprises undulators, wigglers, monochromators, detectors by companies such as DECTRIS and Rayonix, cryostats for low-temperature work used by collaborators from Riken and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and high-pressure cells often supplied through partnerships with Diamond Light Source and European Synchrotron Radiation Facility. The beamline portfolio supports macromolecular crystallography, coherent diffraction imaging, X-ray absorption spectroscopy, small-angle X-ray scattering, and time-resolved pump-probe experiments pursued by investigators from California Institute of Technology, Yale University, and Johns Hopkins University.

Science and applications

Research at the Advanced Photon Source has advanced fields including superconductivity studies linked to work at Bell Labs and IBM Research, battery materials research connected to projects at Toyota Research Institute and Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology, and structural biology investigations complementary to efforts at The Rockefeller University and European Molecular Biology Laboratory. Applications span catalysts developed in collaboration with ExxonMobil and Chevron, semiconductor device characterization relevant to Intel and AMD, and paleontology imaging used by teams from Smithsonian Institution and Field Museum of Natural History. The facility has contributed to discoveries acknowledged by prizes such as the Nobel Prize in Chemistry and facilitated industrial technology transfers involving General Motors and DuPont.

Operations and management

Operations are administered by Argonne National Laboratory under contract with the United States Department of Energy Office of Science, with oversight from advisory panels including members from National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and technical review committees featuring scientists from Imperial College London, ETH Zurich, and University of Cambridge. User access is managed through peer-reviewed proposal systems similar to processes at Berkeley Lab and Diamond Light Source, with safety and compliance coordinated with agencies such as the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and local authorities in Cook County, Illinois. Training and outreach programs engage students and postdocs from institutions including University of Chicago, Northwestern University, and Illinois Institute of Technology.

Upgrades and future projects

Major upgrade efforts have paralleled initiatives at ESRF and SPring-8 and include the multi-year APS Upgrade (APS-U) to implement a multi-bend achromat lattice for substantially improved brightness and coherence, in collaboration with engineering groups from Fermilab, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, and international partners like KEK and Paul Scherrer Institute. Future projects under consideration involve new beamlines for cryo-electron microscopy correlative studies with National Institutes of Health support, high-energy density science programs linking to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, and expanded industrial partnerships with firms such as Boeing and Siemens. Continued investment is driven by strategic plans aligned with the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science and scientific roadmaps from organizations like the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics.

Category:Synchrotron radiation facilities Category:Argonne National Laboratory Category:Research institutes in Illinois