Picometer beams at the Swiss Light Source
© 2011 EPFL
The Swiss Light Source at the Paul Scherrer Institute has produced record low emittance beam of electrons,
achieving very high brightness coherent source of hard X-rays
On the 6th of December 2011 the vertical emittance of the SLS storage ring could be reduced to a world record low value of 1 pm rad. The vertical beam size in the short straight sections of the SLS is then only 3 micron (rms). This was achieved through vertical re-alignment of the magnet girders with 400 mA stored beam and fast orbit feedback running, as well as through application of several different methods of coupling suppression using 36 skew quadrupoles. High resolution profile monitor utilizing vertically polarized component of synchrotron radiation allowed precise determination of the beam size. In the illustration the SLS beam is superimposed on an electron microscope picture of a human hair.