ISA – Institute for Storage Ring Facilities

ISA, the Institute for Storage Ring Facilities at the Department of Physics and Astronomy, Aarhus University, is a Danish National Facility where research is carried out over a wide range of the natural and life sciences, including fundamental physics, material science, molecular biology and laboratory astrophysics, using accelerators and storage rings.

ISA operates the ASTRID2 storage ring, with its full-energy booster ASTRID. The department also houses other research facilities and unique accelerators, including the heavy-ion electrostatic storage ring “ELISA”. ASTRID2, in operation since 2014, is a state-of-the-art 3rd generation light source operating in top-up mode at 580 MeV. In addition to the dipole magnets, two undulators and one Multi-Pole-Wiggler provides spectacularly bright radiation in the scarcely available low-energy range from the infra-red to 1,000 eV.

The ASTRID2 source is operated annually for more than 5,000 hours supplying beam to more than 100 Danish and international users. Synchrotron radiation is provided to the users with an array of monochromators with resolving powers in the range of 1000 to >20,000. By 2016, ASTRID2 simultaneously serves 6 beamlines, each used by an individual research group. Access is offered to beamlines for surface, nano and solid-state science, atomic and molecular physics, and biology (UV spectroscopy, circular and linear dichroism (CD and LD) and spectroscopy). Several of the end-stations offer state-of-the-art equipment providing a rare or unique service within Europe.