ALBA / CELLS

ALBA is a third generation synchrotron facility near Barcelona, Spain to be constructed and exploited by the consortium CELLS financed equally by Spain and Catalonia. It will include a 3 GeV low emittance storage ring which will feed an intense photon beam to a number of beamlines dedicated to basic and applied research. The accelerator complex will consist in a 100 MeV Linear Accelerator and a Booster that will ramp the electron beam energy up to the nominal energy of 3 GeV. The maximum operational design current is 400 mA and it will be operated in top up mode.
In the first phase, an ensemble of seven beamlines will be operational in 2010. In the subsequent Phases, more beamlines are expected to be built. Phase I beamlines are state of the art in terms of optics and instrumentation. They are as follows: 1) Non Crystalline Diffraction beamline (NCD) for SAXS and WAXS experiments, 2) Macromolecular Crystallography (XALOC), 3) Photoemission (CIRCE), 4) X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS), 5) High Resolution Powder Diffraction (MSPD), 6) X ray Circular Magnetic Dichroism (XMCD) and 7) X ray microscopy (MISTRAL). These initial beamlines are designed to cover a wide range of fields such us material science, nanotechnology, medicine, physics, chemistry. As a new facility, ALBA is starting to participate in European projects and is actively seeking to support not only the Spanish but also the European scientific community. For example ALBA is participating in the project named PRE-XFEL (FP7-211604) to carry out the preparatory activities for the implementation of the European X-ray Free Electron Laser Facility. The Linac and Linac-to-Booster transfer line have been commissioned and the booster will start its first commissioning phase in December. The installation of the storage ring is already far advanced and according to schedule. Hutches for many beamlines are already built and first optical elements installed. First users are expected at the end of 2010 with routine user operation in 2011.
Computing and Control is largely centralised in one division. The division takes care of the infrastructure (e.g. cabling and racks), electronic support and development, control software, the personal and machine safety system, scientific software, machine timing, systems (central storage, central and individual computing resources, and the network), management information services, the WEB, and the ERP. The accelerator control system is done with Tango, Sardana Pool, and Tau based on C++ and Python for the software and on PCI, cPCI, and PLCs for the hardware. ALBA is actively participating in the TANGO collaboration and is leading the development in the new generic data acquisition system Sardana in collaboration with the ESRF and DESY. The main purpose of the division is to support its internal customers and the future users of the synchrotron.