Canadian Light Source

Canadian Light Source

Established	1999
Research type	Synchrotron light source
Director	Robert Lamb
Staff	200 (approx.)
Location	Saskatoon, Saskatchewan
Operating agency	Canadian Light Source Inc.
Website	www.lightsource.ca

The Canadian Light Source (CLS) (French: Centre canadien de rayonnement synchrotron – CCRS) is Canada's national synchrotron light source facility, located on the grounds of the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. The CLS has a third-generation 2.9 GeV storage ring, and the building occupies a footprint the size of a football field. It opened in 2004 after a 30-year campaign by the Canadian scientific community to establish a synchrotron radiation facility in Canada. It has expanded both its complement of beamlines and its building in two phases since opening, and its official visitors have included Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip. As a national synchrotron facility with over 1000 individual users, it hosts scientists from all regions of Canada and around 20 other countries. Research at the CLS has ranged from viruses to superconductors to dinosaurs, and it has also been noted for its industrial science and its high school education programs.

Canadian interest in synchrotron radiation dates from 1972, when Bill McGowan of the University of Western Ontario (UWO) organised a workshop on its uses. At that time there were no users of synchrotron radiation in Canada. In 1973 McGowan submitted an unsuccessful proposal to the National Research Council (NRC) for a feasibility study on a possible synchrotron lightsource in Canada. In 1975 a proposal to build a dedicated synchrotron lightsource in Canada was submitted to NRC. This was also unsuccessful. In 1977 Mike Bancroft, also of UWO, submitted a proposal to NRC to build a Canadian beamline, as the Canadian Synchrotron Radiation Facility (CSRF), at the existing Synchrotron Radiation Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA, and in 1978 newly created NSERC awarded capital funding. CSRF, owned and operated by NRC, grew from the initial beamline to a total of three by 1998.