European-Russian Workshop on SSRS-4 at DESY

The workshop was organised by DESY, ESRF and the NRC “Kurchatov Institute”. ESRF is the WP5 lead partner, the Kurchatov Institute is the Russian key partner in WP5.

Around 40 participants from European and Russian labs attended this CREMLIN workshop – labs such as ESRF, Elettra, Max IV, DESY, European XFEL, the Kurchatov Institute including its ITEP branch, the Budker Institute, the Shubnikov Institute and many others. Since this event has been planned as a satellite event to the DESY Photon Science Users´ Meeting 2018, in combination with the European XFEL Users´ Meeting, many participants have also registered for these users´ meetings. Other participants joined the workshop as “external experts”, especially Russian photon scientists representing the future users of the planned X-ray facility.

During the talks and the ensuing vivid discussions, three topics have been addressed: (i) the machine and its proposed parameters; (ii) the users´ viewpoints; (iii) the European partners and how they view the project.

Typical questions that have been discussed are:

• Which type of synchrotron light source should be proposed?
• What will be the preferred energy range for the SSRS-4?
• What are the prospective major fields of application?
• What is the intended complementarity of the SSRS-4 facility with existing Russian and European SR facilities?
• Requirements for a candidate site for the facility?

Especially the different aspects guiding the choice of the energy of the future light source have been discussed in detail with the future user community of the facility being the most important one: Which type of research will be carried out at SSRS-4, and which X-ray beams will be necessary for that research? Representatives of leading Russian universities were contributing to the discussion by giving a picture of their current research with X-rays and of future research demands, including the Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University in Kaliningrad, the Southern Federal University in Rostov-on-Don and the ITMO University in Saint Petersburg. Also, various aspects to be taken into consideration for the choice of candidate sites for the facility have been discussed during the workshop, here again from a user’s point of view.

The next step to be taken within WP5 is the preparation of a solid proposal with specific recommendations for the future European-Russian collaboration for this fascinating Russian project – recommendations for general collaboration, but more importantly for specific collaborations to support the development of a conceptual/technical design report in a follow-up project to CREMLIN.