SOLEIL

SOLEIL ("Sun" in French) is a synchrotron facility near Paris, France. It performed its first acceleration of electrons on May 14, 2006. The name SOLEIL is a backronym for Source optimisée de lumière d’énergie intermédiaire du LURE (LURE optimised intermediary energy light source), LURE meaning Laboratoire pour l'utilisation du rayonnement électromagnétique.

The facility is run by a civil corporation held by the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and the Commissariat à l'Énergie Atomique (CEA), two French national research agencies. It is located in Saint-Aubin in the Essonne département, a south-western suburb of Paris, near Gif-sur-Yvette and Saclay, which host other facilities for nuclear and particle physics.

The facility is a member of the UniverSud Paris.

SOLEIL also hosts IPANEMA, the European research platform on ancient materials (archaeology, palaeontology, past environments and cultural heritage), a joint CNRS / French Ministry of Culture and Communication research unit.

Main parameters

SOLEIL contains electrons travelling with an energy of 2.75 GeV around a 354 m circumference. It takes the electrons 1.2 μs to travel around this ring at almost the speed of light; 847,000 times per second.^[1]