The incredible utility of electromagnetic (EM) radiation can be found in many places. It allows us to wirelessly transmit music over long distances, microwave food and view the world in great detail. But electromagnetic radiation is crucial for studying biological, physical and environmental phenomena. This allows us to make real breakthroughs in our understanding of the world.The scientific community is expanding their horizons with the large-scale harnessing of EM radiation. This includes the creation of new medicines and vaccines, as well as the testing of novel artificial organs, and discoveries that prevent diseases.The revolution in the UK is taking place at the Diamond Light Source national Synchrotron facility, Oxfordshire. This high-tech particle accelerator generates large amounts of EM radiation as synchrotron light. Let's go on a tour to this cutting-edge science facility to see how it works every day and the groundbreaking experiments being conducted.Exploring the synchrotronSynchrotrons are large and complex systems of machines that create electrons, accelerate those electrons to light speed, then deposit them in large storage rings. These high-energy electrons fly around the ring circuit in a continuous fashion until they are manipulated to produce very high-intensity, X-ray light. This is electrons with approximately 3 gigaelectronvolts. A GeV is an unit of energy equal or greater than a billion electronvolts. Scientists can use this light in their experiments.Image credit: Future. This article was brought to you by How It Work. How It Works magazine is packed with action and features about science and technology. It includes everything you need about the universe and how it works.Guenther Rehm heads the Diamond synchrotron’s beamline diagnostics team. This group is responsible for making sure that scientists visiting the facility have access to X-ray light when they need it. Rehm's office is located in Diamond House, a modern glass-walled building where most of the facility's staff live. You will need to cross a security-controlled bridge to reach the synchrotron facility.You will see four main components once you get there. The first is the electron gun. This gun, located in the center of the facility is responsible for creating electrons by heating a high voltage cathode in vacuum. Then, they are forced to bunch together and become compact groups. This is done by passing electron beams through a cavity that has an active alternating electric field.A beam of electron groups compressed from the bunching cavity is directed into a linear accelerator. The synchrotron's second part uses an array of electric fields to cause the electron bunches to accelerate up to 100 megaelectronvolts (MeV) at the speed of light. The sped up bunches of electrons from this point are then injected into the booster synthchrotron.One of the synchrotron’s sextupole magnetics. These magnets are responsible for achromatic corrections and maintaining a stable electron orbit within a facility's storage rings (Image credit: Diamond Light Source).Just off the linear accelerator is the booster synchrotron. It is an O-shaped, 518-foot (158 meter) stainless-steel tube vacuum enclosed by magnets. It can be found within the synchrotron’s storage ring as well as other facilities. The electrons are received by the smaller synchrotron, which then bends them around the vacuum circuit with the aid of 36 dipole magnetics. They are further accelerated to 3 GeV. The electron bunches travel at almost the speed light, and carry an incredible amount of energy. They are then injected into the storage ring of the synchrotron.The storage ring has a similar purpose and build to the booster ring. However, it spans over 1,800 feet (560m) and is 48-sided. The electrons are so powerful that they can speed the entire course in less than 2 millionths seconds. That's 7.5 times faster than the time it takes to circle the Earth's Equator. The giant ring is composed of a vacuum where the charged electrons travel and a series magnets. Quadrupole and sextupole magnetics are used to maintain the beam's focus and position. Special magnets, called insertion devices (IDs), are also contained in the ring. These magnets can manipulate electrons for synchrotron lighting production.Close-up of the Diamond Light Source Injection Devices. Image credit: Diamond Light SourceThe synchrotron's real stars are the IDs. They can get the electrons passing through the straight sections to oscillate within the ring. Super-powerful Xrays are thus produced. These IDs are crucial because they must be placed before any beamline offshoots of the ring, where experiments are taking place. The electrons are emitted into the device and oscillate to create X-rays. The electrons are flung further down the storage ring with dipole magnets. However, the photons travel straight down the beamline to be used in experiments.Controlling your destinyThe beamline central control is next. The central control room is a large and spacious area that overlooks approximately a third the facility's expanding facilities. It houses a main bank with monitors. Two members of the diagnostics team manage the computer systems. Rehm explained that most of the day-today operations at the synchrotron are automated. This explains why there is so little staffing. Because of the complexity of the systems required to create and maintain high-energy electron beams, humans are needed to monitor their status.A software program called EPICS: Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System continuously monitors the beam inside the storage ring. This allows for the invisible beam's properties and effects to be seen through a variety sensors, monitors, cameras and cameras in the ring.Rehm showed that the loss of all the electrons stored in the storage rings in a time span of less than 10 minutes is inevitable. This can be explained by collisions, residual gas molecules and energy loss due to the generation of synchrotron radiation by the insertion devices or bending by dipole magnets. The charge is automatically boosted every so often to maintain beam stability and quality synchrotron lights. EPICS allows you to see the charge drop within the ring, and then return it back to the starting level after 10 minutes.This boost is not only automatic but can also target the areas where electrons are lost. This ensures that there is an even distribution of energy around light-generating rings, Rehm stated. This system is amazing. It can inject additional electrons into depleted electron masses as they glide around the storage rings at nearly light speed.A view inside the Diamond Light Source Facility. The path of the electron beam inside the storage ring is marked by the yellow line, visible in the center-right. Image credit: Diamond Light SourceLooking down at the beamlineYou would then enter the main room of this facility. Standing on a gantry bridge that extends to both sides, one can see the curved expanses of the synchrotron and the individual beamlines. These are branches from a concrete circle. This is the storage ring of the facility, which is enclosed in thick, radiation-blocking concrete shielding. A yellow line identifies the path of the electron beam within the concrete ring and is located on top of it. A tour guide at the facility said that a person could rest on top of concrete for a year and experience a radiation rise of approximately 50% compared to standard background radiation. The ring emits very little radiation.A small, dark room is hidden between two beamlines. A large table is stuffed with cabling, machines, optics, pipes and other equipment. A small hole is made in the wall behind this table. This is the optics diagnostics room. It allows support scientists to examine the temporal structure and fill pattern of the stored electron beam.A small molecule single-crystal diffraction beamline (I12) is used to create an experimental hutch. Image credit: Diamond Light SourceHow to handle the lightIt is easy to understand how the synchrotron functions, but what does it do in real life? Nick Terrill is the principal beamline scientist responsible for small angle scattering beamline (also known as I22). Terrill explains how I22 was used recently to test new polymer-material heart valves. They created a small device to simulate a heartbeat. Then they used I22 to image the internal structure using the synchrotrons high energy X-ray light source. These types of polymer valves are expected to replace problematic mechanical or animal implant valves.You will find the microfocus macromolecular crystallinelography station after a quick walk along the synchrotron's outer walkway. Danny Axford, Diamond's senior support scientist, is on duty at I24. He explained how the team works on membrane proteins and explored their structures, which is crucial for the creation of new drugs.You will find I24's experimental room with liquid-nitrogen storage tanks and an imaging sensor, robotic arm, synchrotron-light-focus optic, and a sample array. Scientists can image rows upon rows of crystals at ambient temperature using the array. This is extremely useful as the heat generated by the imaging process can damage crystals. Therefore, it is important to capture their structure quickly. Many samples are cryogenically cooled.Next stop is the small-molecule single crystal difffraction beamline (I19), which houses a variety crystallized samples that are being analyzed using diffraction techniques. These samples can be used for projects involving anything from cancer to hydrogen storage. Sofia Diaz-Moreno, principal beamline scientist, manages the impressive and versatile X-ray absorption spectrumcopy beamline.The beamline is larger than the rest and has two experiment hutches. These hutches allow for different types of spectroscopy analysis. This type of analysis can image chemical components in catalysts even at very low concentrations. It is amazing to be able to see reaction processes at atomic and microsecond time scales. Scientists can now understand catalysts, metal ion-containing protein and toxic materials like never.Race the electron beamOne final stop is a walk on the roof of storage ring. You would climb back up to beamline level, cross the metal gantry towards the center of facility, and then step on top of concrete roof. Follow yellow beamline marker around facility.A full circuit around the rings would take almost 10 minutes. This is slower than the two-millionths second required for the hyper-charged electrons around the ring.
