New Linear Accelerator

Video: Canadian Light Source goes dark for more stable light over the long haul

Investment will ensure continued world-leading discovery, innovation

The Canadian Light Source (CLS) at the University of Saskatchewan is replacing its linear accelerator (linac), the device that speeds up electrons to produce a beam of light researchers use to study materials at a molecular or cellular level. This critical replacement will ensure the CLS continues to deliver high-quality, stable and reliable light to the over 1,000 scientists from across Canada and around the world who use the CLS each year for research related to health, agriculture, environment and advanced materials.

In May 2024, we began a project to replace our linac with a new unit that will improve the efficiency and reliability of the light beam. For the latest updates, check back on this page or follow us @canlightsource on social media for #newlinac posts.

Critical Milestones on the Path to Beam

The critical milestones on the path to beam, along with estimated remaining durations are listed below. These timelines represent best estimates based on current progress and planning. There remains significant uncertainty associated with many of these steps, specifically the highlighted items which are outside of our routine operations. Timelines are subject to change as commissioning activities advance and new information becomes available.

☑ Component Qualification (Completed) – Isolating and testing each individual component of the system through RF conditioning. At completion of this step, four components did not pass and have been replaced with critical spares.  -
☑ Complete System Bakeout (Completed) – Using external heating elements to drive off residual gases and contaminants in the system. Following completion of this step, vacuum conditions within the LINAC are significantly improved. -
☐ RF Conditioning (In progress) – The process of gradually introducing and increasing RF power to the system. This allows the internal surfaces to adapt to high electric fields, and over time, the system “conditions” itself to handle higher power levels without breakdowns or arcing. 4 weeks
☐ LINAC Setup and Stable Beam - Configuring the LINAC to produce a consistent, stable electron beam suitable for injection into the booster ring. 3 weeks
☐ Beam Capture in Booster Ring - Successfully transferring electrons from the LINAC to the booster ring, where they are further accelerated before being sent to the storage ring. 3 weeks
☐ LINAC Frequency Variation Commissioning for Decay Mode – Conditioning the LINAC to operate across the full range of RF frequencies required to track the varying RF frequency of the storage ring, which shifts to compensate for changes in ring circumference during operations. 2 weeks
☐ Beam Into the Storage Ring for Decay Mode - Injecting and maintaining beam in the storage ring. This phase will allow us to verify basic functionality of the storage ring. 1 week
☐ CLS Planned Outage Fall 2025 – This outage has been shortened by two weeks from our original plan and is now set to run from August 25 to October 7, coinciding with a University of Saskatchewan planned power outage that will enable refurbishment of the facility’s 480V electrical supply. The remainder of the outage is needed to complete annual certifications of safety systems in several beamline and accelerator areas. 44 days
☐ Verification and Post Outage Recovery - System-wide checks and calibrations following the planned outage to ensure all systems are functioning correctly before resuming beam delivery. 1 week
☐ Low Quality Beam to Beamlines - Initial delivery of beam to beamlines with reduced stability and quality, used for identification and resolution of problems with the storage ring electron beam and beamlines. 3 weeks
☐ Reliable Beam Delivered - Achievement of stable, high-quality beam delivery to beamlines. While we cannot guarantee top-up operations at this time, this critical milestone will enable us to check the full functionality of our beamlines and marks the return to normal research operations. 1 week
Updated June 10, 2025

The latest news...

June 12, 2025: We are encouraged to share that a path towards resuming normal operations has been established. Full details of the milestone steps are included below. While there is still significant uncertainty around the exact timing of each stage, current projections suggest that low-quality, unreliable beam may be delivered to the storage ring during the summer months, though it will not be suitable for scientific use. Reliable beam is tentatively anticipated by late November 2025, pending continued success in commissioning and system validation. As the technical team works through this complex process, we expect to encounter and resolve minor technical challenges, supported by a strong and productive collaboration with our vendors. With the completion of each milestone, our confidence in predicting the date of our return to operations will increase; however, at this stage, there is not sufficient certainty to begin rescheduling any beamtime.

We recognize how disruptive this extended outage has been and are extremely sorry for the impact it has had on your research, your students, your collaborators, and your plans. Both the Board and executive leadership share your concerns and are committed to ensuring that the resources and institutional support necessary to complete this work are in place. The entire CLS team remains fully committed to restoring operations as safely and swiftly as possible. We are incredibly grateful for your patience, understanding, and continued support during this time. We look forward with real excitement to welcoming users back to the CLS later this year and supporting the important work about which we are all so passionate.

To help support users navigating funding challenges resulting from these delays, we intend to prepare an open letter outlining the broader LINAC-related disruption at CLS. Once we have greater clarity on the full duration and impact of the outage, this letter will be publicly posted on our website for users to reference or include in grant applications or related correspondence to help contextualize the interruption in research access that may have affected their work, independent of any project-specific factors. If you would benefit from this type of supporting documentation prior to its public release, please contact the CLS User Services Office for assistance.

We will continue to provide detailed updates as we move through each stage of the process, or in early July at the latest. In the meantime, we encourage you to visit our website and follow our social media channels for the latest information.

Bill Matiko
Chief Executive Officer
Canadian Light Source		 Ingrid Pickering
Chief Science Officer
Canadian Light Source		 Martha Crago
Chair
CLS Board of Directors		 Baljit Singh
Vice-President Research
University of Saskatchewan
May 29, 2025: CLS and Research Instruments GmbH (RI) staff have continued testing and preparing our new linear accelerator (linac). Together, we finished qualifying all machine components and found four elements that need to be replaced. This does not hamper our commissioning as sufficient components were on hand. Additionally, representatives from Scandinova, the supplier for our modulator equipment, were on-site to troubleshoot a series of issues and numerous adjustments were made during their visit. We successfully baked the linac in order to improve the vacuum. Now, we are conditioning the linac using radiofrequency (RF) waves. We will continue to RF condition all accelerating structures to a point where reliable, stable user beam can be delivered.
April 30, 2025: Staff from CLS and Research Instruments GmbH (RI), our vendor, have continued working together to prepare our new linear accelerator (linac). Currently, our team is wrapping up individual testing of all the components of the linac. Next, we will reassemble the linac system and bake the equipment to create ideal vacuum conditions for further commissioning. Once this “baking” process is finished, estimated at around 10 days, we will use radiofrequency (RF) waves to condition the accelerating structures. This conditioning process needs to be completed slowly and carefully without interruption. The aim from all of the above procedures is to provide a stable, reliable photon beam for our user community.

April 11, 2025: We have made meaningful progress in commissioning our new linear accelerator (linac). Our team of staff from CLS and RI Research Instruments GmbH (RI), our vendor, have been consulting with experts from other facilities, including an on-site visit from a MAX IV linac expert, to learn from their experience and approaches in conditioning a linac similar to ours. Following expert advice, we completed a bake-out of one linac section, which improved vacuum conditions and overall system performance. We have also modified our radiofrequency (RF) conditioning strategy to adopt a more gradual process. This slower approach is already yielding positive results.

Based on these encouraging developments, we now plan to bake out all three linac sections before continuing with our revised RF conditioning strategy, with the potential for some beam delivery to the storage ring as early as July. While this is an important step in restoring user operations, any storage ring beam at this stage would likely be unstable, which is not suitable for research use. Therefore, we remain unable to provide a definitive schedule for our return to normal operations and will provide a more concrete timeline as our technical work advances. We are enormously grateful for your continued patience and understanding as we work to restore operations.

March 27, 2025: The process of baking out accelerator section 3 began on March 19, 2025. This heating process will take about a week and should be complete soon. After that, all the diagnostic tools will be moved to section 3, and the next step - RF conditioning - should start on March 28, 2025. If the bakeout of section 3 provides improvement to the RF conditioning, we will do the same for the other two structures. otherwise we will focus on delivering user beam with current conditions.

Experts from MAX IV, Sweden’s national synchrotron, will visit CLS starting on March 31, 2025 for a week, to support our ongoing efforts. Max IV's new linac is very similar to CLS’s and their experience bringing their system online will be invaluable as we work towards stable user beam.

In parallel to the heating up of section 3, we resumed RF conditioning  of section 1 on March 19, 2025. Section 1 is currently at around 26MW at 0.2 microseconds, and our goal is to reach 30MW at 4.5 microseconds. We have collected data from microphones and directional couplers at each end of sections 1 and 3 to find out where the issues are. This data, which we’re sharing with the LINAC vendor, Research Instruments (RI), and our colleagues from other facilities – including CERN, MAX IV, SLAC, and Elettra - shows that there might be arcing near the section input couplers.

We are grateful for everyone’s patience as we put all our efforts towards bringing beam back.

March 4, 2025: A joint message from CLS and RI: Last year the Canadian Light Source (CLS) contracted RI Research Instruments GmbH (RI) to design, build, install, and commission a new linear accelerator (LINAC). While installation of CLS’s new LINAC was completed successfully and on time in August 2024, problems encountered during commissioning have prevented the CLS from resuming regular operations. Staff from RI and the CLS are working around the clock – onsite and remotely – to determine the cause of the setback and to restore beam to CLS users as soon as possible.

Together, RI and CLS have been carrying out a multifaceted investigation of the problem, including a thorough inspection and qualification of all the LINAC RF components, as well as new RF diagnostics and RF pieces. The new RF components have either been loaned or purchased by RI, or fabricated by RI or CLS, and have been qualified onsite at the facility. Because of the time required to carry out this troubleshooting, CLS must regrettably cancel a large portion of scheduled user time in 2025.

The unexpected problems encountered in commissioning the RI LINAC – a product known for its robustness and successful operation in labs around the world – have prompted our two organizations to seek external expertise from other accelerator laboratories. We are soliciting input on the design, quality assurance processes, and the commissioning methodology. In anticipation of the potential need to replace accelerating structures and to minimize the schedule impact, RI is already manufacturing structures and procuring the copper needed if more structures are required.

Our two organizations are aligned in our shared goals to have CLS resume user operations as soon as possible and to provide the LINAC to original specification.

Bill Matiko
Chief Executive Officer
CLS

Michael Pekeler and Christian Piel
Managing Partners
RI Research Instruments GmbH

February 14, 2025: In close collaboration with our vendor, we began conducting a systematic inspection of the entire linac in January. Together, we dismantled the system to thoroughly inspect each component using in-house expertise and tools such as Scanning Electron Microscopy to identify possible issues. We conducted visual inspections inside the accelerating sections using a borescope and added more diagnostics, including microphones and additional radio frequency (RF) directional couplers, to pinpoint breakdowns within the sections. We are testing individual RF components to ensure they are in good working condition. As well, we are contacting experts at sister labs around the world who operate similar systems to get their input. Because we have not yet identified the root cause of the issues, we cannot determine an exact date for when we will have beam restored for our users.
January 14, 2025: Despite completing the installation of our new LINAC on schedule, we have encountered unforeseen challenges during commissioning that have prevented it from achieving the expected performance. While significant progress has been made, the LINAC is not yet reliable enough for beamline operations. Our team is working with the vendor to resolve these issues. As a result, we must extend cancellations for all beamtime until March 24, 2025. We deeply regret the inconvenience and disruption this has caused our users and we will be rescheduling lost beamtime. Because we need to both reschedule shifts and replace critical storage ring components in the second half of 2025, we will not open a regular Call for Proposals for beamtime for July to December 2025.
new linac
December 17, 2024: Despite significant progress in delivering beam from the new linac—including improving beam stability and jitter, consistently capturing beam in the booster ring, reaching 170MeV in the linac, and accelerating the beam in the booster ring—we regret to share that we are not yet able to reliably store beam in the storage ring to support beamline operations. Therefore, all beamtime planned for January 9–February 2, 2025 has been cancelled and will be re-scheduled later in the year. We sincerely regret the effect this delay will have on our users’ research programs. Thank you for your patience and support as we continue to work diligently through the final stages of our linac upgrade.
December 6, 2024: The CLS team is diligently working with RI to deliver user beam in the New Year. Despite initial challenges, we are making steady progress in commissioning and troubleshooting. This week, we focused on capturing beam in the booster ring and addressing issues with energy spread, jitter, and long-term drift. Investigations by our team have laid the groundwork for another booster capture attempt this weekend. We suspect water cooling issues are causing energy drifts, and our team is actively investigating. We are confident in our technical expertise and are prioritizing tasks to achieve our goal. Thank you for your continued support.
November 29, 2024: We've made significant progress over the last two weeks, focusing on RF conditioning and beam commissioning, and proactively addressed some issues, including inspecting and removing two RF windows suspected to be faulty. Next, we plan to conduct radiation measurements, which will enable us to attempt booster ring capture this weekend. This will mark an exciting first step toward delivering beam to the storage ring. While we have encountered some technical challenges, we are diligently exploring all options to deliver a reliable and stable beam for users on January 9, 2025. Thank you for your continued support and patience as we work towards these important milestones. We remain committed to overcoming challenges and delivering the best possible results for our user community.
November 12, 2024: We have electrons in our new linear accelerator! Our staff have been working around the clock to prepare our new equipment and this is a major milestone in the linac project. This image shows our equipment detecting the first bunch of electrons generated from our new electron source. Our team then worked to get electron bunches further and further down parts of our linac. They successfully got a 42 mega electron volt (MeV) beam all the way to the end of the linac. This moment was duly celebrated by our staff in the control room! The next step is to get an electron beam with more energy (specifically, 250 MeV). We are happy to be that much closer to operating our synchrotron again. 
October 28, 2024: We have two modulators (pictured) that provide radiofrequency waves to our linear accelerator (linac). These waves speed up a beam of electrons to just shy of the speed of light, which allows us to make synchrotron light for research. Typically, one modulator powers the first half of our linac and the second modulator powers the latter half. However, our new modulators can be configured to power the linac differently. Now one modulator can power the entire linac (at a reduced electron beam energy) or the modulators can switch which part of the linac they're powering. This offers greater flexibility and reliability for our synchrotron as it allows for maintenance to be completed on one modulator while the other continues to run and power our new linac. Our team is currently preparing the modulators to run in this configuration. 
October 10, 2024: We are continuing to prepare our new linear accelerator (linac) to ensure it will create an excellent vacuum and be ready to receive billions of electrons from our electron source. During this past week, we needed to temporarily turn off the machine. After some machine checks were completed, we were able to resume heating up the #newlinac with radiofrequency power. We now have 17.5 megawatts of current running through the linac and climbing. That’s a 65 per cent increase compared to last week! 
October 4, 2024: This week, we replaced an ion pump in the linear accelerator (linac) that wasn’t working properly. Ion pumps remove charged molecules from the linac to create a better vacuum. In order to make the swap, the linac had to be exposed to air. As a result, we had to carefully increase the power in the linac to protect the equipment. We constantly assess how the machine responds as we ramp up the power. Because some of the radiofrequency power gets reflected back onto the machine, we need to ease off temporarily. For this reason, the power in the linac can change hour to hour as we condition the machine for normal operations. We currently have 10.6 megawatts of power in the linac. This is a 430 per cent increase compared to last week!
September 27, 2024: Our staff are continuing to prepare our new linear accelerator by using radiofrequency power to heat up the machine and cook off any remaining impurities in our vacuum. We need to ramp up this power slowly to protect the equipment. If we increase the power too quickly, some of the energy can get reflected back onto the machinery and cause damage. Previously, we were up to 700 kilowatts. This week, we hit two megawatts, an increase of 186 per cent! We will carefully increase this power until we reach 36 megawatts, which is what our machine uses during normal operations. 
September 20, 2024: Now that the new linac is in place, our focus shifts to commissioning. There are several stages of commissioning that need to be completed, but for now the RF structures are the star of the show. This phase of the upgrade actually involves three separate steps: cavity tuning of the RF structures, power balancing, and RF conditioning itself. Each of the five RF structures that make up the linac operate at a specific resonant frequency, or tune. Ensuring the tune is spot-on involves manually adjusting screws, physically pulling or pushing the cavity, or changing the temperature. While most of this was done in the factory, we may still need to make some micro adjustments here on site. Devices called power splitters ensure that each of the five RF structures gets its share of the power produced by our facility’s two modulators (photo). Last but not least, conditioning ensures that any remaining impurities not cleaned out at the factory are caught now. We heat up the waveguides and RF structures with a small amount of RF power to cook off any lingering contamination from the inner surfaces.
September 13, 2024: We are preparing our new linear accelerator (linac) to ensure it will create an excellent vacuum and be ready to receive billions of electrons from our electron source. Our team already thoroughly cleaned each component inside and out to help achieve a good vacuum level. However, we need as few molecules inside our linac as possible. To help achieve this, we are using radiofrequency power to heat up the linac and “bake” off any impurities still present. The power is slowly increased while staff monitor the machine. This week, we carefully ramped up to 700 kilowatts. During normal operations, the machine uses 36 megawatts.
September 5, 2024: Our staff are testing the equipment for our new linac to ensure that each piece is performing optimally. Electronic programs that monitor and control the linear accelerator’s operation are being developed and tested. Vacuum systems in the machine are getting inspected to ensure there are no leaks. The water pressure in the cooling systems are being verified. We are also checking that all the power supplies provide the appropriate voltage and current. 
August 29, 2024: From the electron source to the modulators to the power supplies, everything that we use to operate the linear accelerator needs to be monitored closely and controlled electronically. Our team has started to set up work stations that enable us to operate the various pieces of the new linac from our control room (pictured at right). Since the new machine is so different, many of the systems we used previously will need to be updated or redesigned entirely. This requires collaboration between our vendor, Research Instruments, and our Controls and Instrumentation department. The staff who will use this system are also involved with this process, including accelerator physicists, radio frequency and high voltage technicians, and operators.
August 23, 2024: Years of work went into designing our #newlinac to ensure this machine will suit our specific needs. Its numerous components were special ordered and took months to years to arrive. Many of the parts were created for us by Research Instruments in Germany or were otherwise sourced from around the world. Once these pieces started arriving, space considerations came into play. We needed to find room in our facility for 63 crates that took up over 97 square meters of floor space. These numerous parts are now getting fine-tuned for operation in our basement.
August 16, 2024: Our facility is about the size of a football field and produces extremely bright light for research on 22 beamline stations. This requires a lot of electricity to operate. A great deal of our electricity usage goes into accelerating a beam of electrons to very close to the speed of light, which we then use to produce our light. Our new linac uses a high voltage power supply operating at 90,000 V – much higher than the ~12.5 V of a car battery! This 90,000 V is used to give the electrons their initial acceleration out from the electron source before travelling down the rest of the linac and being accelerated even further. This week, our staff installed a gate around this high voltage equipment (pictured). This is one of many safety measures to help keep our personnel safe.
August 8, 2024: This week, our staff have been getting the linear accelerator ready to create a high-quality vacuum. Our synchrotron consists of a network of pipes from the electron source all the way to the beamlines that operate under a vacuum. Without the vacuum, gas molecules in the pipes would become a giant obstacle course for the electrons, knocking them off their path, and we wouldn’t be able to provide bright light for our users. To create a vacuum in the linac, we use special pumps called turbo pumps (similar to the ones in the foreground in photo at right) to push air out until it reaches a very low pressure. Ion pumps then capture any charged atoms or molecules that are floating inside, achieving even better vacuum than the turbo pumps can do on their own. Once a vacuum is created, we check for any leaks where air might be sneaking in. There are many valves throughout the system that allow us to close off a particular section of the pipe while looking for or correcting a leak. Leaks are fixed by tightening connections, re-soldering joints, or both. Optimizing the vacuum for the whole linac takes time, as this involves testing and correcting dozens of components.
August 1, 2024: It's time! Our team has started installing one of the most critical pieces of the #newlinac: our new electron source. This piece of equipment initiates the electron beam we use to create synchrotron light for research. How will it provide electrons? Using heat. We will heat a tungsten button doped with barium oxide inside the the electron source by running a large amount of electricity through it, much like an element on an old electric stove. Once it reaches a sufficient temperature, this causes electrons to “boil off” the plate.To eject electrons, the button is set to a negative voltage that repels the electrons' natural negative charge. To control when electrons proceed down the linac, we place an electrified grid between the electron source and linac. This grid holds the electrons back until we want a pulse of electrons to proceed. This is similar to a dam holding back water. Once the electrons pass through the grid, they are guided to the linac where they will be accelerated to just shy of the speed of light.
July 25, 2024: Our team has installed most of the critical components for the #newlinac in our basement. Now that these pieces are in place, we need to get them ready for operation. One major step will be getting the system to create a high-quality vacuum. The vacuum removes as many particles as possible from the linac. Without it, the electrons in the linac would run into particles and not get to where we need them to create synchrotron light for research. Under normal operations, our vacuum is so effective that our machine has less particles than outer space near the international space station! In other news, our electrical technicians have been busy getting the linac Access Control and Interlock System (ACIS) up and running. Our facility takes many precautions to ensure we can provide a high-quality beam as safely as possible. The ACIS helps to keep personnel out of areas where elevated radiation could be present when the accelerator is operating. For example, it monitors whether gates (such as the one pictured at right) are open or closed. Without the ACIS, we wouldn't be able to use the new linac once it is ready.
July 18, 2024: Over the past week, our hard-working team has made substantial progress on installing waveguides and cooling equipment (pictured at right). Curious about what these pieces do? The linac accelerating sections that were installed last week form a long pipe with radiofrequency (RF) waves inside that transfer energy to the electrons, which accelerates them to just shy of the speed of light. The RF waves are generated by pairs of devices known as “low-level RF generators” and “modulators.” Our team installed new versions of these devices last month. The low-level RF generators create a small amount of RF power at a specific frequency that the modulators then amplify to make the waves more powerful. Waveguides direct these amplified RF waves to where they need to be in the accelerating sections. Every component involved in this process generates a substantial amount of heat. For this reason, we use cool water to keep the equipment from overheating or expanding.
July 11, 2024: Our team has started installing the accelerating sections of our #newlinac! This work is being done under the direction and supervision of our vendor, Research Instruments, who designed and built the linac system. They have come from Germany to Saskatoon to help with the installation. Installing a linac isn’t as easy as it sounds. Just getting the pieces into our basement is an undertaking. Our staff moved three 5-meter-long accelerating sections by crane into the accelerator hallway. (One of these sections is pictured at right.) The sections had to be tilted at a 60-degree angle in order to be lowered down the crane well. Our team had done a practice run earlier, to prepare for this tricky step. Now that the pieces are downstairs, they will need to be placed with precision. The gap between two of the accelerating sections has to be as close to 7094.535 mm as possible. Next, our staff will begin installing the rest of the components, including the electron source.
June 27, 2024: Last week, we installed the Medium Energy Beam Transport (MEBT) into the linear accelerator (linac) hall -- one of the first of many noticeable structures that we will see make their way down into the basement. But what is it? And why do we need it? As electrons travel down the accelerating sections, they tend to drift. To create the synchrotron light that we use for innovative research, we need magnets to help “shape” the electrons in a focused, stable beam as they exit the first accelerating section of the linac. The MEBT is made of 3 quadrupole magnets. Each of them has four poles that create a magnetic field that varies linearly with the position of the beam. That is to say, a particle in the center of the four poles will experience no field at all, while a particle at the edge will experience a strong magnetic field. This creates a focusing effect on the beam travelling through.
June 20, 2024: What a difference a fresh coat of paint makes! Our linac hallway is looking shiny and brand new. While the paint was being applied, our staff shifted focus to our modulator room. New modulators have been installed along with electrical cabinets. Once the paint had dried, work could continue with mechanical and electrical service installations for the #newlinac. The blue stands that will hold the new accelerating sections of the linac have been placed, aligned, and bolted down. Meanwhile assorted testing, measurements, and calibration have all been happening behind the scenes to prepare us for the installation of the linac itself.

June 6, 2024: With the old linac equipment removed from our basement, our health and safety staff needed to scan these pieces for radiation before they could be recycled or donated. They have now checked over 175 items! Next, we cleaned the linac hallways and started giving them a fresh coat of paint. Our staff also fully dismantled our modulator room. Klystrons, modulators, and other infrastructure were removed, making way for the mechanical and electrical service installation that is now ongoing. We have new modulators and klystrons waiting on our experimental floor. This equipment will provide the radiofrequency energy that is used to accelerate electrons through our linac before they produce synchrotron light for research. 

May 30, 2024: The CLS has been dark for a short time, but there has already been a significant amount of progress thanks to our hard-working team. Once our operators turned off the machine, we soon started to dismantle the electron source and linear accelerator in our basement. Our staff have already removed the power supply tank, accelerating sections, and other assorted infrastructure. About 90% of the removed equipment will be recycled and the remaining 10% will be donated to universities or museums. The appearance of our basement has already changed dramatically. The linac hallways that are usually filled with specialized equipment are looking quite empty. While it may seem that this project has just begun, years of planning have led us to this point to help ensure the transition goes as quickly and smoothly as possible. Our team of engineers, technicians, physicists, and many others carefully prepared for when the key was turned for the final time and the six months of work that would follow. Installing a new linac will ensure the CLS provides high-quality, reliable synchrotron light for innovative research for years to come.

May 27, 2024: Starting today, the Canadian Light Source (CLS) at the University of Saskatchewan will begin work to replace its linear accelerator (linac) - the system that speeds up electrons to produce the ultrabright light researchers use to study materials at the molecular or cellular level. The new linac will replace aging infrastructure from the Saskatchewan Accelerator Laboratory that dates back to the 1960s and the early days of the CLS, and will enhance the facility’s efficiency and reliability. Over the next six months, staff will remove the old linac, its electron source and associated operating systems and refurbish the underground tunnel in which it is located. A new linac with a shorter and more modern design will then be installed, including accelerating devices, electromagnets, high-power radiofrequency transmitters, computer control system and ancillary systems, under the direction and supervision of the vendor, Research Instruments (Germany), who designed and built the system. Read more