Télécharger la vidéo (34.15 MB - wmv) (34.15 MB)Illustration : Aurélie Bordenave
How does a synchrotron work? Who comes here to perform experiments? Find some answers in this illustrated video.
All the illustrated videos:
- SOLEIL, a light source for research
- The lights of SOLEIL
- When light explores matter
SOLEIL, a light source for research
Audio Transcription
How can we make our cell phones' battery last more than 6 hours? And can we keep our strawberries in the fridge for longer? How can we make a drug more effective?
To answer these questions, and many more, researchers must investigate and manufacture materials. Most of the time, they need to understand the composition, the structure and the properties of their samples.
This is why they must be able to probe the matter with extremely high precision. But it is not so easy ! In some cases, their samples can undergo very fast transformations ! The fact that researchers want to make their observations on very small scales also makes the whole thing even more difficult. And in certain cases, their samples only contain extremely small quantities of matter.
To face all these challenges, researchers need to use a very intense source of light in their experiments. The light they are looking for can be found in a synchrotron radiation facility such as SOLEIL.
The SOLEIL center is home to a particle accelerator. But not just any particle: not protons or neutrons, only electrons. These small particles with a negative electric charge rotate around the atomic nucleus and are responsible for electricity.
First off, the electrons are torn from a metal tablet that is as small as a thumbnail. Then they are accelerated to come close to the speed of light in three successive tunnels: the LINAC, the booster, and finally, the storage ring.
But where is the light in all that?
Well, each time their trajectory is curved as they go through a magnet, these electrons lose energy in the form of very thin and very intense beams of light. This is what we call synchrotron radiation. This type of light is what the researchers use for their experiments.
There are only about fifty synchrotrons in the world… And millions of researchers! This is why the available beam time is very special and sought-after. The scientists coming to carry out experiments at SOLEIL are called “users”. To become a user, they must send a request several months in advance.
Then, boards of specialists choose the best research projects. If the researchers commit to publishing their results in scientific newspapers, they come to SOLEIL for free. Their results are then shared with the scientific community worldwide.
Sometimes, however, the scientists want to keep their results confidential, in which case they must pay to be able to use the synchrotron.
Each year, more than 3,000 users from around the world come to SOLEIL to conduct their research. They work around the clock during the time granted to conduct their experiments, as the synchrotron is open day and night.