Diamond Light Source, the national synchrotron science facility at Harwell in Oxfordshire recently celebrated its double anniversary of 15 years since first light and 20 years as an organisation.
Advances in beamline and accelerator technology have taken great strides in the time since Diamond first produced beams in 2007. This, coupled with the increasing science demands for higher brightness, coherence and access to the x-ray beams, has motivated a facility upgrade featuring an order-of-magnitude reduction in electron beam emittance along with a doubling of the number of straight sections and raising the electron beam energy from 3.0 to 3.5 GeV.
This challenging project has recently attained final funding approval from the two major funding bodies, the UK Government and the Wellcome Trust. The upgrades to the Diamond accelerators and associated technical systems will be carried out over a period of 18 months, beginning in late 2027.
This half-day meeting, organised by members of the IOP particle accelerators and beams group, will explore the challenges and novel solutions that have been developed for the project. These design solutions will have synergies with many other areas of accelerator science and engineering, from the latest advances in radio frequency power, vacuum technologies, magnet and lattice design, to the state of the art in beam diagnostics and instrumentation.
The meeting will take place in person at RAL and online. For participants able to join in person a buffet lunch will be provided courtesy of Diamond Light Source, providing the opportunity for networking. This event is free and open to all.
A dedicated science case workshop will follow at a later date.