RI receives contract for cSTART technical design

For many years, researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) have been pushing the development of particle accelerators with a special emphasis on generating and circulating very short electron bunches of order 1ps or less. Now we are excited to introduce a new project: cSTART - the Compact STorage ring for Accelerator Research and Technology. cSTART aims to push electron storage ring operation with ultra-short pulses down to the fs-range and a wide momentum acceptance. We will be leveraging KIT’s linear accelerator FLUTE as an injector for ultra-short bunches (3 fs to 1ps) and exploring separate injection points for Laser Plasma Accelerator (LPA) generated bunches.

Following a public tender, RI Research Instruments was awarded the contract for the technical design of this new facility. RI has brought in additional design and manufacturing expertise from Scanditronix for the electromagnets, FMB for the vacuum, and ITech for the diagnostics. The combined teams are now already deep into the design phase. Together, we are tackling the challenges of injecting short electron bunches with an unusually wide energy spread into the storage ring and bringing this innovative machine to life in the existing FLUTE hall.

Stay tuned for our Technical Design Report this autumn, as we progress towards a realization contract which is expected by the end of 2024.