Sirius, o maior e mais complexo laboratório brasileiro

This project is at the cutting-edge of physics. To really take advantage of this, certain technologies, which were necessary for the construction of the accelerator, simply did not exist. The biggest challenge is that no one could define the construction's prerequisites.

Building such an evenly-leveled floor, developing concrete that won't crack – none of that's easy, no one had done it before. SIRIUS LEAPING TOWARDS BRILLIANCE Synchrotrons are large-scale equipment. There are about 60 synchrotrons around the world.

They produce wide-spectrum electromagnetic radiation, from infrared to x-rays, and are used to illuminate materials to study their microscopic and atomic characteristics – different types of materials and diverse applications. Synchrotron light is produced by charge acceleration, using charged elementary particles, to speeds close to that of light. When accelerated by forces generated by strong magnetic fields, a wide spectrum of electromagnetic radiation at very high intensities is produced, the source of which is only a few microns in size, about the width of a strand of hair.

This is what characterizes the source's intense brightness. Besides being universal and producing a wide spectrum, it is intensely bright. This is important because when a source is very small, focusing on extremely small spots on any given material is easier, and you can then produce chemical and structural mappings and three-dimensional images.

Nothing in the world compares to a synchrotron's universality as a research instrument, it can be used for everything from biology to museology. Anything you come up with – someone's already conducted an experiment to study it with a synchrotron. Measurement accuracy increases with the brightness of the source – several kinds of techniques and measurements which are made with x-rays, ultraviolet rays, infrared and everything else.

This is the path which many labs around the world are taking – towards ever-brighter beamlines. Any country in the world dealing with its population's economic and social problems operate, maintain and build particular infrastructures within its research system. In Brazil, UVX has been operating for over 30 years, assisting more than 1000 researchers from several areas of knowledge every year.

However, the increasing complexity of scientific inquiry requires more competitive equipment, which Sirius will, in time, provide: it'll rank among one of the world's most competitive equipment. It will be 10. 000 times as fast, in some cases, as the world's most technologically-advanced equipment, increasing spatial resolution, relative to UVX, for example, by a factor of 1.

000. These accelerators accelerate particles called electrons which, in this case, travel through vacuum chambers. These electric beams are accelerated at very high energies.

In UVX's case, this energy is close to 1. 4 billion volts. SIRIUS will run at 3 billion volts.

The old machine, which is till running in the lab, has a light beam of 1mm by 0. 1mm. SIRIUS has a light beam of 0.

01 by 0. 01mm. It is much smaller.

Between 2009 and 2012, we developed a design for a third-generation synchrotron. In 2012, we invited an international panel to evaluate the project. They said it was good enough for 2012, but they strongly recommended us to evaluate the possibility of migrating to a newer technology which was being developed for the construction of MAX IV, a Swedish synchrotron.

The panel members said, "You'll face enormous technological challenges, because no one's ever built anything with this new technology, there are none currently in operation. But Brazil has a very interesting opportunity”. So the team accepted the challenge and this required a complete redesign of the beamline and accelerator components.

Such equipment requires a series of high-tech developments, from civil engineering, because it of the sophisticated construction work, to the components for accelerators and beamlines, encompassing several areas of precision mechanics, x-ray detectors, electronic systems, control systems etc. So we made partnerships with Brazilian companies – small, medium and large enterprises – which means that around 85% or 86% of the expenditures were made within the country, distributed among these companies. This building is comprised of two circular and concentric rings.

In the outer ring we have the support rooms for beamline operators, offices and a technical gallery overhead. In the internal part, we have the installations gallery. The only way of accessing the interior of the shielding where the accelerators are housed, is by crossing one of seven footbridges like this one: we walk over the shielding and access the building's interior.

This place is the experimental hall. It is characterized by an extremely high degree of flatness. The floor has an average circumference of 600m and we kept it leveled within 20mm beteween its highest and lowest points.

The entire building was devised so that any mechanical excitation which might occur outside won't find its way into the section where the experimental stations are housed. Sources of synchrotron radiation are used to study molecular, even atomic, structures. They're very small objects.

Vibrations, therefore, can jeopardize the experiments. Everything that produces vibrations is isolated by springs to stop the structure from vibrating when the fluids are circulating through pipework. We'll usually have cold water for air conditioning, to cool down certain components.

Other circuits will distribute water with a high thermal stability in order to stabilize equipment temperature. The other big challenge was the accelerator shielding, which is this structure: a tunnel with concrete walls, 1m to 1. 5m thick was built so that the 500m-average circumference would be a single piece, with no expansion joints.

The roofing is sustained by rubber shock absorbers, preventing the transfer of vibrations caused by wind. We dug up the soil, enriched it with cement, and returned it. The result is a large and rigid block with low warping features.

None of this is directly connected to the building's structure: if you look to your right, and inside, you'll notice there's no connection to the floor we're stepping on now. We're right at the edge between the building and the special flooring. This is were the accelerators and beamlines are set up.

90cm below this is a gap, empty space, which guarantees these two structures don't touch. This is where the electron's journey to the synchrotron begins. They are produced in this part called an electron gun or emitter.

It heats up a piece of metal which spontaneously emits electrons at low energy. Tension is applied, 100kv in this case, and you accelerate these electrons to a low level of energy compared to the 3 billion we want it to reach in the end. Further ahead, the acceleration phase will have been concluded.

This happens at this point. From this point onwards, the electron's energy will be constant and all we need to do is transport these electrons to the next machine. The beam has been travelling all the way from the Linac, and now we're nearing the booster, which is responsible for increasing the energy from 150 million to 3 billion volts.

In the external wall, looking that way, we have the storage ring. It is highly stable and has very a very high focusing power, but it only runs at 3 billion volts. This is the source of the synchrotron proper, this is what generates light for the users.

It's a long journey: two accelerators, the booster, which emits 2 pulses per second, and all of this accumulates within this machine until it reaches its maximum operational current. You can see the tunnel is sort of sawtoothed. At the bottom of one of these "teeth", you'll see an orifice from which we extract a specific beamline.

This one in particular, this "tooth", is connected to a white structure called the optic hutch – in which synchrotron radiation is extracted –, which, in turn, is connected to the experimental hutch. That's where the experiments are in fact conducted, where Sirius’ day-to-day action will occur, from an experimental standpoint. This group of layers, which is part of the Manacá beamline, will allow the study of three-dimensional macromolecule structures, of proteins, and how medication interacts with these molecules, how they bond.

Other beamlines are being created, and each of them has a slightly different purpose. The Cateretê beamline will allow us to make three-dimensional images with nanometric resolution of objects like cells or catalyst granules. The Caranúba beamline will allow us to produce chemical mappings, at a nanometric resolution, of materials such as fertilizers, soil, and catalysts.

The Mogno beamline will allow us to conduct tomographies on larger objects, a few centimeters in size, using a high-penetration, high-energy x-ray. The Ema beamline will allow us to study materials under conditions of extreme temperature, pressure and magnetic field forces, and how new phases of matter emerge under these conditions. The Ipê beamline allow us to generate inelastic x-ray scatterings, photoelectron spectroscopies, with the goal of understanding how electric charges are organized within a certain material, as well as how the stages of chemical reaction occur during the formation of chemical bonding in enzymes and catalysts.

We're currently in the final assembling stages for the accelerators. And once the electrons start circulating in the main accelerator, we'll have beams coming out of the beamlines, which will go through months-long testing in order to verify if the equipment is functioning correctly. I consider this a structuring project for Brazil.

It'll provide the scientific community with the most modern equipment for material analysis. This equipment can be used to study the most complex and fundamental questions in almost any area of knowledge. Sirius will be one of the world's most modern pieces of equipment, allowing the Brazilian community from several areas, both academic and industrial, to conduct experiments.

That's why we have this enormous structure. É para isso que serve toda uma estrutura como esta aqui.