Introduction

Abstract

The application of synchrotron radiation in physics, chemistry, materials science, and biology by now has matured from an exotic experimental field to a well-established area of science. It all started with a few scientists using the radiation emitted, as an unwanted by-product, by large electron accelerators for their own scientific investigations. These electron accelerators turned out to be very powerful sources of electromagnetic radiation, since the rf acceleration power is almost exclusively converted into emission of synchrotron radiation. Actually, the power converted into synchrotron radiation limits the maximum beam energy attainable in any of these machines. Later on, scientists were allowed to establish their own laboratories, tapping into the vacuum environment of the accelerator and guiding the radiation through ‘beam lines’ into their experiments. Finally, dedicated synchrotron radiation sources were established, designed and constructed exclusively for the production and application of synchrotron radiation in science. By now some of these dedicated facilities have been in existence in excess of more than 15 years. At this point in time the next quantum leap is just ahead, as new synchrotron radiation sources are being commissioned world-wide, where undulators and wigglers are used as the major sources for the radiation instead of the bending magnets. These insertion-device sources have unique radiation characteristics, promising a gain in brightness of the emitted radiation by several orders of magnitude.