IRENI (Infrared Environmental Imaging) Beamline: First Light and Commissioning

IRENI, the new infrared beamline extracting 320 mrads of light from the SRC, opened to first light on July 11, 2008. Since then, several shifts per week have been dedicated to aligning the beamline and conditioning the front end so that the beamline can be opened to regular beams.


Figure 1.

Figure 1 shows synchrotron light illuminating the array of 12 toroids (only 9 are visible here), which are the first mirrors that the light intercepts in the beamline. The picture shows a shadow of a water-cooled tube across the center of each mirror and rectangles of visible synchrotron light above and below the shadows.

Figure 2 shows an image of the infrared Focal Plane Array (a multi-element infrared detector), when it is illuminated with 12 individual beams.


Figure 2.
This will be slightly defocused to create a homogeneously illuminated area for upcoming experiments, including measuring kinetics of living cells under environmental control. A big thank you to the SRC staff (particularly the Engineering and Shop staff) for all of their hard work in helping to make this happen! In addition, the IRINI group and future users thank the Users for your patience through the alignment and conditioning phase of the beamline.