Welcome to the CompactLight project website!

During the past decades Synchrotron Radiation facilities have seen an impetuous growth as a fundamental tool for the study of materials in a wide spectrum of sciences, technologies, and applications. The latest generation of light sources, the Free Electron Lasers, capable of delivering high-intensity photon beams of unprecedented brilliance and quality, provide a substantially novel way to probe matter and have very high, largely unexplored, potential for science and innovation. Currently, the FELs operating in EU are five: FERMI, FLASH and FLASH II are operating in the soft X-ray range, SwissFEL and EuroXFEL are hard X-ray FELs that started operation recently. While most of the worldwide existing FELs use conventional normal conducting 3 GHz S-band linacs, others use newer designs based on 6 GHz C-band technology, increasing the accelerating gradient with an overall reduction of the linac length and cost.

With CompactLight we intend to design a hard X-ray FEL facility beyond today’s state of the art, using the latest concepts for bright electron photo injectors, very high-gradient X-band structures at 12 GHz, and innovative compact short-period undulators. If compared to existing facilities, the proposed facility will benefit from a lower electron beam energy, due to the enhanced undulator performance, be significantly more compact, as a consequence both of the lower energy and of the high-gradient X-band structures, have a much lower electrical power demand and a smaller footprint.

CompactLight gathers the world-leading experts in these domains, united to achieve two objectives: disseminate X-band technology as a new standard for accelerator-based facilities and advance undulators to the next generation of compact photon sources, with the aim of facilitating the widespread development of X-ray FEL facilities across and beyond Europe by making them more affordable to build and to operate.

CompactLight | News

• [NEW!] CompactLight Follow-Up Meeting, Eindhoven, 3-4 Apr 2023
• XLS Workshop on Complementary Use and Opportunities, Zoom, 8-9 Nov 2021
• XLS Plenary Meeting on WP6 and WP8, Zoom, 18 May 2021
• XLS Plenary Meeting on WP3, WP4 and WP5, Zoom, 24 February 2021
• Third XLS Annual Meeting ("2nd Glasgow Virtual"), Zoom, 20-25 November 2020
• Third XLS Midterm "Glasgow Virtual" Meeting, Vidyo, 16-18 June 2020
• !Project Extension! New end date: 31 December 2021.
• !New Work Package! WP8: Beam Instrumentation and Diagnostics, lead by Alessandro Cianchi (UniToV).
• !New Partners! UniToV: University of Rome 'Tor Vergata' & BNG: Bilfinger Noell GmbH
• Second XLS Annual Meeting, Athens, Greece, 21-24 January 2020