Preparation for the APS Upgrade Conceptual Design Report

Communication with APS Users, 3/22/2010
J. Murray Gibson, Associate Laboratory Director for Photon Sciences at Argonne National Laboratory

Following extensive discussions and planning with the Advanced Photon Source user community, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is evaluating the approval of Critical Decision-0 (CD-0) to mark the start of our Advanced Photon Source Upgrade (APS-U) project in the next few months. The “Science case and technical approach for the Advanced Photon Source Upgrade” was presented to Bill Brinkman, Director of the DOE Office of Science, on March 11th, 2010 - an important milestone in authorizing CD-0 approval. While we await the formal decision to move forward, we need to advance our planning in anticipation of a positive CD-0 determination by the DOE. We must prepare for the next very important step in the proposed APS-U project: development of a Conceptual Design Report (CDR). In the conceptual design we would describe the capabilities that we propose for the Upgrade at a level approximately 10% of the final design, and we would include a range of alternatives. We encourage user input as we plan for the conceptual design process.

The Conceptual Design Report will be based on the scientific case that we articulated for the APS Upgrade (formerly the "Renewal"). In the CDR we must show how our choices flow from the scientific vision we have articulated, organizing the beamline sections in six areas:

Imaging and Coherence; Extreme Conditions; Ultrafast Dynamics; Interfaces in Complex Systems; High-Resolution Spectroscopy; Proteins to Organisms.

In preparation for the CDR, we can build on the many beamline proposals that have been reviewed by the APS Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC). Overall balance and scientific direction of the Upgrade project will be achieved with advice from the SAC and a Technical Advisory Committee soon to be appointed. We also have extensive user community input from the 2008 Workshop that led to the CD-0 proposal. There is a significant range of scope for beamline projects—from brand-new beamlines to small-to-major beamline upgrades. With the SAC’s help we identified a set of larger “flagship” projects within the Upgrade—listed below under the appropriate beamline areas—that we should include in the baseline of our conceptual planning. As a part of the Upgrade, we are planning to move some beamlines, consolidate techniques and programs, and invest in many of the existing beamlines.  Although these activities might not rise to the level of “flagship” status, they are a very important part of the Upgrade and will set the stage for future science at APS.  We strongly encourage our user community to continue to contribute ideas and feedback to the development of the proposed Upgrade.  

For each of the beamline areas, we have assembled a technical advisory committee that is led by someone (the Team Leader) within the X-ray Science Division at the APS who will be responsible for delivery of that portion of the conceptual design of that beamline. We have also identified a Co-Team Leader from Argonne or a local institution, a set of key users who have agreed to participate in planning activities, and a liaison from the APS SAC. We expect each group to hold dialogs with the user community. To facilitate those dialogs we have implemented “forums” in each of the beamline theme and non-beamline sections below. We encourage you to make use of them to participate in finalizing our plans.  In addition, any user who wishes to be involved in developing the material to be incorporated into a full conceptual design is encouraged to contact the appropriate Team Leader. If there are process concerns or more general issues, please contact Denny Mills or one of the members of the Upgrade Steering Committee.

Beamline themes, technical advisory committees and flagship projects that will be included in the conceptual design planning:

Some examples of CDR documents for beamlines (.zip) are available for download.

Because the project is not yet formally approved, we do not have a clear date for when the CDR would be required. However, it seems likely that we should be ready to make significant progress by the summer of this year, so we must enhance the pre-conceptual activities to be in position to move fast if needed.

During development of the CDR it will not be practical or necessary to identify the location of each of the possible beamline upgrades that are proposed. However, in parallel with the CDR development, we are working on a roadmap for beamline configuration that would determine how we will accomplish the concerted set of upgrades and improvements through optimization of our existing beamline resources. A preliminary (or strawman) roadmap was made available in early January of 2010, and we have invited comment and proposed alternatives from the user community.

Developing the roadmap involves many constraints, not least of which are the restricted possibilities for the location of long straight sections and long beamlines.  Over the last Christmas holiday, our accelerator experts were calculating various possibilities that introduce as much flexibility as possible into the configuration, to minimize the disruption of existing activities. The roadmap released in early January was the first we were able to construct that met the various constraints, but we need to keep re-evaluating this in the context of user feedback and possible additional flexibility on the accelerator side, which we are investigating. We will meet with all the user groups who have expressed concern about this draft roadmap and work to optimize the map further in the next few months. We need such a roadmap soon in order to make more precise resource and schedule estimates, and get it as close as reasonably possible to the final configuration at the time we submit the CDR.

Outside the beamline area we will be carrying out similar activities to develop the CDR in concert with the Technical Advisory Committees. Where appropriate, user input into non-beamline activities is encouraged. More details and contacts can be found at these web links:

We are also planning upgrades to all of our beamlines as needed to achieve higher-current operation and to optimize insertion device performance. For the purposes of the CDR, these improvements will be summarized in the accelerator improvements section.