OVERVIEW OF THE STATUS OF THE SOLEIL PROJECT

SOLEIL is a third generation Synchrotron radiation Source, under construction in France near Paris. The Storage Ring consists in a 354 m circumference ring, with 16 cells and 24 straight sections, out of which up to 21 will house Insertion Devices (ID). The optics features a low 3.7 nm.rad emittance at the 2.75 GeV operating energy, so as to provide high brilliance, from the VUV up to the hard X ray domain. In order to reach a long beam lifetime, and beam position stabilities in the micron range, significant attention was paid at each design stage (optics, magnets, beam position monitors, vacuum and RF systems,..), including on the design of the building, the construction of which is now complete. This resulted in some unprecedented approaches such as the intensive use of NEG coating vessels, or the development of a dedicated SC RF cavity and of 200 kW solid state RF amplifiers. The injector system (100 MeV Linac) and the 3 Hz full energy Booster synchrotron have reached nominal operating conditions by fall 2005, while the ring commissioning started in May 2006. Innovative ID's were designed and built so as to provide the best possible performances in a wide energy range (5 eV to 50 keV).