Status of the 1GeV synchrotron radiation source at SORTEC

The construction of the 1GeV synchrotron radiation source facility optimized for the production of soft x-rays has been completed in the end of March this year at Tsukuba Research Laboratory of SORTEC Corporation. Initial beam operation has been started in the end of July after four months of tests without beam. The first beam was successfully stored in the storage ring at the design energy on September 28. The stored beam current of 200mA which is our design goal has been achieved with the beam lifetime of over 4 hours only one month after the first beam storage. This paper gives a summary of the characteristics of the facility and describes the remarkable progress during the initial beam operation. (author)