ALS-U

The upgrade of the Advanced Light Source (ALS-U) is a $400M project commissioned by the Department of Energy, whose goal is to replace the accelerator and the storage ring of the ALS, in order to provide a fully coherent soft x-ray beam to the beamlines, limited only by the limits of physics. 

The ALS Photon Science Development team is working in close collaboration with the ALS-U teams to ensure a successful transition through the upgrade, and develops new state-of-the-art endstations, to allow ALS users to take full advantage of the exquisite properties of coherent x-rays. 

More information: 

• https://als.lbl.gov/als-u/overview/

• Planning a New Era of Discovery with the Upgraded Advanced Light Source (Berkeley Lab News, August 2026)

• Expert Interview: Dimitri Argyriou on Seeing Things More Clearly, in the Right Light (interview of ALS director, May 2025))

• ALS-U documentation (Access restricted to LBNL employees)

• ALS Down time (Access restricted to LBNL employees)

Here's a summary by Antoine Islegen-Wojdyla for the American Physical Society – Division of Physics of Beams (pdf):

The Upgrade of Advanced Light Source Will Provide High-Brightness Soft X-Ray Beams to the Synchrotron User Community