This original synchrotron facility, costing the equivalent of 66.5 million Euro, became operational on 19 December 1981. It was situated in Wilmersdorf, then a borough of Berlin. The storage ring had a circumference of approx. 60 m. The circulating electrons that provided the radiation were in the energy range of 200 to 800 MeV. After its decommissioning in 1999, the component parts of the BESSY I machine were donated to the SESAME project by the German Authorities and have consequently been shipped to Jordan. Famous achievements of BESSY I were the calibration of the spectrometers for the solar observatory probe SOHO as well as for the detectors for the Chandra X-ray Observatory.
BESSY II
Groundbreaking for the new improved BESSY II synchrotron source in Adlershof took place on 4 July 1994, and the facility was inaugurated on 4 September 1998. The project cost was an equivalent of approximately 100 million Euros. The successor of BESSY I has a circumference of 240 m, providing 46 beam lines, and offers a multi-faceted mixture of experimental opportunities with excellent energy resolution. The combination of brightness and time resolution enables both femtosecond time and picometer spatial resolutions. Electrons can be accelerated to an energy of up to 1.7 GeV, and are subsequently injected into the storage ring. Synchrotron radiation emerges from the dipole magnets that bend the beam on a circular path, as well as from undulators and wigglers. The total power input during regular operation is 2.7 MW. BESSY II can be run in different modes, according to the time-distance between the electron wave packets that circulate in the storage ring:
multi bunch: This is the most common mode. Around 350 equal packets are in the ring, with a time-distance of 2 ns
single bunch: This mode is in effect for two weeks each half-year. Only one single electron packet is in the ring, thus enabling the users to measure with the highest possible time resolution. Two light pulses arrive with a gap of 800 ns and can therefore be easily separated.
low alpha: This mode exists in single and multi bunch sub-modes. The spatial resolution of the electron packet is higher, which leads to a higher rate of Terahertz radiation and shorter light pulses.
In September 2008, the Metrology Light Source was inaugurated. This facility in close proximity to BESSY II is run by PTB and provides synchrotron radiation in the energy range of far infrared and Terahertz radiation. The two facilities complement one another.
In 2000, the construction of a free electron laser on the BESSY site was planned, which was dubbed BESSY-FEL. It was supposed to create extremely short and bright ultraviolet and X-ray pulses. In the autumn of 2008, the project was cut, and only an extension to the FLASHfree electron laser in Hamburg is now to be built.
