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Deputy Director RIKEN SPring-8 Center

Deputy Director
Hitoshi Tanaka(D. Eng.)


The SPring-8 campus features two innovative X-ray sources: SPring-8, which is a brilliant chaotic source, and SACLA, which is an X-ray Free-Electron Laser (XFEL). Our photon science facilities have been available for academic and industrial experiments that have used them for various applications, such as life sciences and nanotechnology. We make best efforts to maintain world-leading capabilities at our facilities by continuously upgrading light sources, optics, detectors, and experimental approaches in alignment with our strategic development policy.

SACLA has been available for user operations since March 2012. As one of only two XFEL facilities in operation around the world, SACLA has enabled many exciting scientific discoveries over the last five years. Key objectives for the upcoming facility upgrade are improving experimental efficiency, developing optics components including detectors and data acquisition system, and enhancing measurement methods.

Our other source, SPring-8, opened for user experiments in October 1997 and since that time has maintained world-leading performance. However, several new ring-based light sources with competitive performance have recently launched in other countries and other existing facilities are planning major upgrades. Therefore, we have started to develop plans for a substantial upgrade of our SPring-8 facility. The upgrade would reduce natural emittance to around 100 pm.rad by adopting a Multi-Bend Achromat (MBA) lattice configuration within the existing machine tunnel.




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