Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source: CHESS

Abstract

Synchrotron radiation is now generally accepted¹ as an important scientific tool for the study of matter in all its forms. There are many synchrotron sources throughout the world providing radiation over a considerable portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. The new facility, CHESS, at Cornell University provides a source of radiation primarily in the x-ray regime at unprecedented intensities. This continuous radiation can be several orders of magnitude more intense than the line spectrum of a good x-ray tube (and therefore in the range of seven orders of magnitude more intense than the continuous background radiation from a tube). In addition, the synchrotron source has the striking property that it is confined to a very narrow angular spread, which allows the experimenter to combine the twin properties of high intensity and intrinsic collimation to enhance dramatically the number of photons incident on even very small specimens. In a sense, comparing the “brightness” of a synchrotron source to that of a conventional x-ray tube is analogous to comparing a laser to a conventional light source.