The story
The road to the CLS: 1972–1999
Canadian interest in synchrotron radiation dates from 1972, when Bill McGowan of the University of Western Ontario (UWO) organised a workshop on its uses. At that time there were no users of synchrotron radiation in Canada. In 1973 McGowan submitted an unsuccessful proposal to the National Research Council (NRC) for a feasibility study on a possible synchrotron lightsource in Canada. In 1975 a proposal to build a dedicated synchrotron lightsource in Canada was submitted to NRC. This was also unsuccessful. In 1977 Mike Bancroft, also of UWO, submitted a proposal to NRC to build a Canadian beamline, as the Canadian Synchrotron Radiation Facility (CSRF), at the existing Synchrotron Radiation Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA, and in 1978 newly created NSERC awarded capital funding. CSRF, owned and operated by NRC, grew from the initial beamline to a total of three by 1998.
A further push towards a Canadian synchrotron light source started in 1990 with formation of the Canadian Institute for Synchrotron Radiation (CISR), initiated by Bruce Bigham of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL). AECL and TRIUMF showed interest in designing the ring, but the Saskatchewan Accelerator Laboratory (SAL) at the University of Saskatchewan became prominent in the design. In 1991 CISR submitted a proposal to NSERC for a final design study. This was turned down, but in later years, under President Peter Morand, NSERC became more supportive. In 1994 NSERC committee recommended a Canadian synchrotron light source and a further NSERC committee was formed to select between two bids to host such a facility, from the Universities of Saskatchewan and Western Ontario. In 1996 this committee recommended that the Canadian Light Source be built in Saskatchewan.
With NSERC unable to supply the required funds it was not clear where funding would come from. In 1997 the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) was created to fund large scientific projects, possibly to provide a mechanism to fund the CLS. In 1998 a University of Saskatchewan team led by Dennis Skopik, the SAL director, submitted a proposal to CFI. The proposal was to fund 40% of the construction costs, with remaining money having to come from elsewhere. Assembling these required matching funds has been called "an unprecedented level of collaboration among governments, universities, and industry in Canada" and Bancroft – leader of the rival UWO bid – anckowledged the "Herculean" efforts of the Saskatchewan team in obtaining funds from the University, the City of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan Power, NRC, the Provincial Government of Saskatchewan, and Western Economic Diversification. At a late hour CFI told the proponents that it would not accept the SAL LINAC as part of the proposal, and the resulting shortfall was met in part by the spontaneous announcement by the Saskatoon city council and then Mayor Henry Dayday that they would double their contribution as long as other partners would. On 31 March 1999 the success of the CFI proposal was announced.
The following month Skopik took a position at Jefferson Lab in the USA. He decided not to stay on as director of the Saskatoon facility because his expertise was in subatomic particles, and, he argued, the head of the CLS should be a researcher who specializes in using such a facility. His successor was Mike Bancroft
Construction: 1999–2004
At the start of the project, all staff members with the former SAL were transferred into a new not-for-profit corporation, Canadian
Light Source Inc., CLSI, which had primary responsibility for the technical design, construction and operation of the facility. As a separate corporation from the University, CLSI had the legal and organizational freedom suitable for this responsibility. UMA, an experienced engineering firm, now part of AECOM, with extensive experience managing large technical and civil construction projects, was hired as project managers.
The new building – attached to the existing SAL building, and measuring 84m by 83m in area with a maximum height of 23m – was completed in early 2001.
Bancroft's appointment ended in October 2001 and he returned to UWO, with Mark de Jong appointed acting director. Bancroft remained as acting Scientific Director until 2004.
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The SAL LINAC was refurbished and placed back into service in 2002 while the booster and storage rings were still under construction. First turn was achieved in the booster ring in July 2002 with full booster commissioning completed by September 2002.
New director Bill Thomlinson, an expert in synchrotron medical imaging, arrived in November 2002. He was recruited from the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility where he had been the head of the medical research group.
The 1991 proposal to NSERC envisioned a 1.5 GeV storage ring, since at this time the interest of the user community was mainly in the soft X-ray range. The ring was a racetrack layout of four to six bend regions surrounding straights with extra quadrupoles to allow for variable functions in the straights. The design contemplated the use of superconducting bends in some locations to boost
the photon energies produced. The drawback of this design was the limited number of straight sections. In 1994 a more conventional machine with 8 straight sections was proposed, again with 1.5 GeV energy. At this time more users of hard X-rays were interested and it was felt that both the energy and number of straight sections were too low. By the time funding was secured in 1999 the design had changed to 2.9 GeV, with longer straight sections to enable two insertion devices per straight, delivering beam to two independent beamlines.
Construction of the storage ring was completed in August 2003 and commissioning began the following month. Although beam could be stored, in March 2004 a large obstruction was found across the center of the chamber. Commissioning proceeded quickly after this was removed, and by June 2004 currents of 100mA could be achieved.
On 22 October 2004 the CLS officially opened, with an opening ceremony attended by federal and provincial dignitaries, including then-Federal Minister of Finance Ralph Goodale and then-Saskatchewan Premier Lorne Calvert, university presidents and leading scientists. October 2004 was declared "Synchrotron Month" by the city of Saskatoon and the Saskatchewan government. Peter Mansbridge broadcast the CBC's nightly newscast The National from the top of the storage ring the day before the official opening. In parliament local MP Lynne Yelich said "There were many challenges to overcome, but thanks to the vision, dedication and persistence of its supporters, the Canadian Light Source synchrotron is open for business in Saskatoon."
Operation and expansion: 2005–2012
The initial funding included seven beamlines, referred to as Phase I, which covered the full spectral range: two infrared beamlines, three soft X-ray beamlines and two hard X-ray beamlines. Further beamlines were built in two further phases, II (7 beamlines) and III (5 beamlines), announced in 2004 and 2006 respectively. Most of these were funded through applications to CFI by individual universities including UWO, the University of British Columbia and Guelph University
In March 2005 leading infrared researcher Tom Ellis joined the CLS from Acadia University as Director of Research. He had previously spent 16 years at the Université de Montréal.
The first external user was hosted in 2005, and the first research papers with results from the CLS were published in March 2006 – one from the University of Saskatchewan on peptides and the other from the University of Western Ontario on materials for organic light-emitting diodes. A committee was set up in 2006 to peer review proposals for beamtime, under the chairmanship of Adam Hitchcock of McMaster University. By 2007 more than 150 external users had used the CLS, and all seven of the initial beamlines had achieved significant results.
The CLS building was also expanded in two phases. A glass and steel expansion was completed in 2007 to house the phase II medical imaging beamline BMIT, and construction on the expansion needed to house the phase III Brockhouse beamline started in July 2011 and is still ongoing as of July 2012.
Bill Thomlinson retired in 2008, and in May of that year physics professor Josef Hormes of the University of Bonn, former director of the CAMD synchrotron at Louisiana State University was announced as the new director.
Science fiction author Robert J. Sawyer was writer-in-residence for two months in 2009 in what he called a "once in a lifetime opportunity to hang out with working scientists" While there he wrote most of the novel "Wonder", which won the 2012 Prix Aurora Award for best novel."
By the end of 2010 more than 1000 individual researchers had used the facility, and the number of publications had passed 500.
From 2009–2012 several key metrics doubled, including the number of users and the number of publications, with more than 190 papers published in 2011. More than 400 proposals were received for beam time in 2012, with approximately a 50% oversubscription rate averaged over the operational beamlines. By 2012 the user community spanned all regions of Canada and around 20 other countries. That year a high school group from La Loche Saskatchewan became the first to use the purpose built educational beamline IDEAS. Also in 2012 the CLS signed an agreement with the Advanced Photon Source synchrotron in the USA to allow Canadian researchers access to their facilities.
From Wikipedia’s article on Canadian Light Source, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4