The lights of SOLEIL

What lights are used at SOLEIL? Why such a diversity? Find some answers in this illustrated video, very accessible and didactic.

All the illustrated videos:
 
- SOLEIL, a light source for research  
- The lights of SOLEIL
- When light explores matter

The lights of SOLEIL

Audio Transcription

At SOLEIL the electrons permanently circulate in the storage ring, producing synchrotron radiation. When the light leaves this ring, it is guided in laboratories set up around the ring, called "beamlines". This is where the researchers come to run their experiments.

They expose their sample to the beam.

Through the various detectors installed around the sample, they can obtain information about its composition, about its chemical, magnetic and electronic properties, and about its structure.

The light that allows researchers to obtain a lot of information is called white light. It contains all known colors, also called wavelengths, in the visible range; or in other words, all the colors of the rainbow. But it also contains invisible light, such as infrareds among the lowest energies, and ultraviolets and X-rays among the highest ones.

Altogether, SOLEIL has 29 different beamlines. Each one of them is specialized in a type of experiment. For that, it only uses one small fraction of the light produced by the electrons, as the rest of the light is filtered. Certain beamlines only use X-rays, while others only use infrared or ultraviolet light.

A great diversity of samples can be analyzed. This is why SOLEIL attracts many researchers from all scientific fields.