As the third and final user run of 2025 continues, we’re looking ahead to 2026 with the posting of the run schedule for the first part of the year.
This schedule has required a lot of discussion, and I wanted to bring you up to speed on the decisions that went into it. The APS has been running very well, but with any new machine, especially one of the size and complexity of the upgraded APS, it helps to have as much time as possible to study its inner workings and optimize its performance. With the previous run schedule, we simply didn’t have as much time to conduct those machine studies as we would have liked.
That’s why, when approaching this new schedule, we incorporated more two-day machine studies sessions to conduct this optimization. In agreement with our sponsors at the Department of Energy, we slightly reduced the number of user hours we will deliver in FY2026. Our usual agreement is for 5,000 hours, and we devised the schedule to allow for 4,896 hours, which covers our need for additional time for accelerator studies this coming year.
This month we returned the accelerator to its design operating current of 200 milliamps. We plan to continue at that level until November 5, when we switch over to timing mode for the remainder of the run. This pattern of dividing the run cycles seems to work well, so you’ll see it reflected in the new long-range schedules for 2026.
The call for proposals for the 2026-1 run (which begins on Feb. 2) has recently closed. As you can see on the beamline progress chart below, we now have 51 beamlines accepting users for experiments, with 32 of those in the general user program, and we continue to commission the remaining ones. This month we moved both the PtychoProbe at 33-ID and Atomic at 34-ID into commissioning, which means all of the feature beamlines are now online. We’re moving quickly towards having a full suite of beamlines ready for your use, and we can’t wait to see what you do with them.
As always, keep your eye on the APS website for the latest information. We’re looking forward to welcoming you and your experiments to the APS, whether this year or in 2026.
Until next month,
Jonathan Lang
Interim Deputy Associate Laboratory Director
for Science and Technology
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