Day 3 - What happens in the beamlines?

It's day 3 of the Diamond Industrial Liaison advent calendar and today we would like to tell you about our experimental stations here at Diamond which we call Beamlines.

Light generated by electrons in the storage ring passes into the experimental stations, or beamlines, where the experiments are carried out. Each beamline is optimised for a different kind of experiment, but they have some key components in common.

Optics Hutch -  The first room the beam of light enters is the optics hutch, which contains optical devices such as mirrors and diffraction gratings to filter and focus the beam.

Experimental Hutch - This second hutch houses the experimental equipment. Researchers place their sample on a rotating arm, surrounded by detectors, to register the data given by the sample when the beam of light is targetted on it.

Control Cabin - The final hutch is where the scientific team is monitoring the experiment. Through powerful computers, they can control the alignments, sample position and gather the data obtained by the detectors.where the light is filtered and focused. 

Schematic of a beamline layout

This is a diagram of the beamlines (please click to expand) that are currently operational here at Diamond. They are subdivided into 'Villages' based on the techniques they offer and the area of research they specialise in. There are currently 6 villages:

MX (Macromolecular Crystallography)
Spectroscopy
Soft Condensed Matter
Materials
Engineering and Environment
Surfaces and Interfaces