ALBA is operating in top-up mode since September. Last week it was the first time that the beam survived all week (118.5 h) without a single beam trip since top-up operation was started.
In the top-up mode injection, the current in the Storage Ring is kept constant, injecting almost continuously a very small fraction of current to cope with the beam losses due to the finite lifetime. In this situation, the Front ends remain open during injection.
This injection mode ensures a constant thermal load on the accelerators and on the optical component of the beamlines, which increases greatly the position stability of the photon beam at the sample. This, together with the fact that a constant photon flux at the sample means a constant signal level at the detectors, sensibly improves the data quality of the experiments performed at ALBA.
Figure shows the current in the machine from October 28 to Nov 2 constant at 100 mA.
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