Beamtime availability and partition

Beamtime availability and partition

Each year, shut-down periods for maintenance and upgrade of the storage ring and the beamlines, are scheduled on a regular basis.

Except for the scheduled maintenance shut-downs, beamtime is expected to be available for users 24 hours a day, 5 days a week (from Wednesday to Sunday). The dedicated day for machine studies and maintenance is on Monday.

For the moment, Tuesdays are devoted to radio protection tests and for the construction of the 6 last beamlines.

For each allocation period, the schedule for beamline maintenance and upgrades, and for availability of beamtime for users is given (see. Machine calendar (165.6 KB)).

The beamtime partition is as follows :

• 65 % of beamtime is given to academic users having applied through the regular process of evaluation by the peer review committees;
   
• 20 % for beamline maintenance, instrumentation and technical development, and for in-house research, under the responsibility of the Beamline Manager who reports on its use to the Scientific Directors; this percentage can be increased up to 25% in the case of a beamline with many associate scientists participating in its operation.
   
• An additional fraction, up to 5%, can be left for rapid access at the discretion of the Scientific Directors.
• Up to 10% of beamtime can be devoted to proposals with charge for admission.

Within the available period to users, the different modes of machine operation are indicated in the Machine calendar (165.6 KB) (i.e. multibunch, 8 bunches, etc.).

Shifts duration

Beamtime are allocated in shifts, of 8 hours.
Shift timings are from 08:00 to 16:00, 16:00 to 24:00 and 00:00 to 08:00.
Experiments are principle programmed to start at either 08:00, 16:00 or midnight.
 
You are invited to come the day before or a few hours before particularly for the shift which begins at night, so that SOLEIL staff members are available to assist you in setting up experiments during normal working hours.
 
To optimise the schedule, beamtime is allocated in days by series of 3 x 8 hours shift blocks, but flexibility is kept to accommodate users who may require different numbers of shifts.
 
In some cases, on multi-branches beamlines, these 3 x 8 hours shifts blocks might be divided in order to optimise manpower on the experiments (beamtime sessions).