The ALBA Synchrotron is a complex of electron accelerators designed to produce synchrotron light to visualise the structure and properties of matter, particularly at the nanometric scale. The facility is located in Cerdanyola del Vallès (Barcelona), in Parc de l'ALBA. It is a public consortium, co-financed in equal parts by the General State Administration and the Regional Government of Catalonia. Construction of the ALBA Synchroton started in 2006 before it was opened in 2010 and became operational with official users in mid-2012.
Main features
ALBA is a third-generation synchrotron light source on par with the latest models built in Europe. The accelerator complex is composed of a linear accelerator, which is used to accelerate electrons up to 100 MeV, a booster synchrotron, in which electrons are accelerated up to 3 GeV, and a storage ring where the synchrotron light is generated and emitted to the different experimental stations.
Each year, the ALBA Synchrotron generates about 6,000 hours of light and serves more than 2,000 researchers from the academic and industrial communities. ALBA currently has eight operational beamlines, mainly in biosciences, magnetism and materials science. Four more lines are currently under design or construction and will be operational from 2020.
Facts and figures
The following diagram shows the fields of application of the ALBA Synchrotron beamlines:
