Status of the Preparation to the Commissioning of the ThomX Storage Ring

Abstract

ThomX is a compact Compton based X-ray source under construction at LAL in Orsay (France). The ThomX facility is composed by a 50-70 MeV linac, a transfer line and a 18 meters long Storage Ring (SR). The Compton scattering between the 50 MeV electron bunch of 1 nC and the 30 mJ laser pulses stacked in the Fabry-Perot cavity results in the production of photons with energies (up to 90 keV) with a maximum flux of 1013 photons/s. The ThomX construction will start shortly aiming to be completed in the middle of 2017. The preparation to the SR commissioning as far as a control system and beam physics applications are concerned is progressing gradually in order to prepare and test all the tools well ahead the start of the machine. The SR commissioning will face with many challenges providing the low energy, compactness, the nonlinear beam dynamics, the limited beam storage and need for the precision and stabilization in the Interaction Region. Several techniques used at the Synchrotron Light Sources should be modified/adapted to meet all the specificity of the ThomX. This is a report on preparation of the ThomX SR commissioning, its status, planning, main challenges and expectations.