Introduction: synchrotron radiation time resolved concurrent experiments—a new Italian route to China

Abstract

On November 11, 2010 in Shanghai qualified Chinese and Italian scientists met for the first Bilateral Italo/Chinese Workshop on Synchrotron Radiation Time Resolved Concurrent Experiments: Advantages and Future Applications. The workshop had been conceived to increase the scientific exchange between Italy and the P.R. China with the main goal to promote the development of new and unique methods of investigation by the means of synchrotron radiation. From its discovery in 1947 the development of synchrotron radiation sources and the growth of the related applications have been impressive and continuous all over the world, in particular in the major industrialized countries. In more than 50 years since its discovery, facilities around the world constantly evolved to provide beams in different forms, at different energies and with different properties for an incredible number of applications. Experimental researches based on this technology involve many academic disciplines and synchrotron radiation is nowadays an essential tool in many frontier disciplines. Because of its outstanding features, synchrotron radiation is a high-level multidisciplinary experimental platform that plays an essential role in many researches and technological applications, being universally acknowledged by the scientific community, the society as well as the governments. Actually, with more than 50 operational storage rings existing all over the world, laboratories based on synchrotron radiation sources are the most widely operated large-scale facilities with a total investment in the range of billions of dollars. Synchrotron radiation helped to push forward a huge number of researches that led to important discoveries. The reconstruction of the atomic structure of many proteins or of the local structure of high critical temperature superconductors may give just an idea of the