Libera BPMs selected for SOLEIL II: Celebrating two decades of cooperation

We are pleased to announce that our company has been awarded the tender for the Beam Position Monitor (BPM) Electronics for the SOLEIL II upgrade project. 

This is particularly important to us, as Synchrotron SOLEIL was one of the first two customers to decide to use Libera Electron BPM electronics in the light source, instruments back in March 2003. Over the following 21 years, we have continued collaborating together, making sure the instruments were working properly and assuring the proper performance to the users. Winning this tender is not just another project to work on, but also it is the recognition of more than two decades of good work by our entire team. 

  • The first Libera Electron was delivered to SOLEIL in 2004. Borut (holding the package), who was at the time just a young engineer, is now the Head of our Hardware team.

  • Libera Electron on the snow for the first time (on its way to SOLEIL, 2004)

  • While visiting and patching a Libera Electron in 2006, Peter (second from the left) is still a key part of the team and is now our Libera project manager.

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What is SOLEIL II?

The new accelerator being built will be the world’s most compact and highest-performance facility in the intermediate energy range (around 3 GeV), in terms of the size and divergence of the electron beams produced. It will strengthen France’s strategic position in the production and use of synchrotron radiation.  

SOLEIL II will replace the current accelerators, while maintaining the existing infrastructure and beam extraction geometry of the beamlines, in order to minimize the project cost.
The new accelerator will not only be cost-efficient but also energy efficient as it will be built on rational use of resources:  

  • 50% reduced energy consumption by diminishing the use of electromagnets,  
  • reducing usage of drinking water by 80% by upgrading the cooling towers and using closed circuits for systems that use rare fluids such as helium.  

You can find out more about the project on Soleil website.  

What will Instrumentation Technologies bring to SOLEIL II?  

Instrumentation Technologies will be responsible for a BPM system at the new accelerator. In total, there will be 220 BPMs connected to the Libera Brilliance+ instruments.

The Libera Brilliance+ for SOLEIL II will use the latest module generations, including the new computer module, BPM module and event-receiver module. Compared to the current generation, the new CPU module features 3x more cores (12), 4x more memory (16 GB) and has a 300% overall benchmark index. 

Besides the boost in the processing power, the instrument features 2.5 GbE and 10 GbE network interfaces for seamless data transfers, which brings a noticeable improvement in the readout performance. 

The latest hardware capabilities are supported with the latest Ubuntu Long-Term-Support Operating System (24.04) and TANGO 9.5. When additional features are added to the ‘libera’ software, such as angle-based Interlock detection, configurable Fast-Data-Stream for the FOFB (Fast Orbit Feedback) and others, the result is the state-of-the-art BPM system that will support SOLEIL team in the smooth transition from SOLEIL to SOLEIL II where it is planned to operate for the next decades.

More information about Libera Brilliance+. 

Project timeline 

The SOLEIL II project is divided into two phases, each lasting 5 years. First, the construction period should be finished by 2030, while the second, that will lead to fully operational accelerator, should finish by 2035. And what does this mean for our company?
Libera Brilliance+ instruments need to be delivered by the end of 2025. Another big task for our team, but not something we haven’t done before. We are up for the challenge!