• J.-M. Filhol, J.C. Besson, P. Brunelle, L. Cassinari, M.-E. Couprie, J.-C. Denard, C. Herbeaux, N. Hubert, J.-F. Lamarre, J.-P. Lavieville, P. Lebasque, M.-P. Level, A. Loulergue, P. Marchand, A. Nadji, L.S. Nadolski, R. Nagaoka, M.-A. Tordeux
  SOLEIL, Gif-sur-Yvette

After two years of operation, the SOLEIL 3rd generation synchrotron light source is delivering photons to 20 beamlines with a current of 250mA in multibunch or hybrid modes, and 60 mA in 8 bunch mode. The radiation control of the beamline hutches is performed at 300 mA, but recently a 455mA current was stored during machine tests following the installation of the second RF cryomodule. It is foreseen to reach the maximum current of 500mA in the early 2009 and to operate in top-up mode from then on. The new transverse feedback loop has enabled to improve the performance of the single bunch and multibunch beams. The beam position stability is in the range of few micrometers thanks to the efficiency of the fast orbit feedback. Fifteen insertion devices are now installed in the storage ring, ten others are under construction, and a cryogenic undulator is under development. A big effort is being taken in order to compensate the effects of these insertion devices on the machine performance. The good operation performance achieved in 2007 (first year) has been improved in 2008 during which ~4 000 hours will have been delivered to the users with a 95.5% availability and a 30 hours MTBF.

• R. Nagaoka, L. Cassinari, J.-M. Filhol, M. Labat, M.-P. Level, C. Mariette, R. Sreedharan
  SOLEIL, Gif-sur-Yvette

Ever since the first user operation, the digital transverse bunch by bunch feedback system developed at SOLEIL has successfully been operated, achieving a stable multibunch beam at the highest intensity in the two planes at zero chromaticity with a single chain working in a diagonal mode. Since then a vertical stripline, optimised to generate large deflections to combat the strong single bunch headtail instability, was installed to construct another chain. The combined use of the two chains allowed enhancing the feedback performance. In particular, by differentiating the feedback gain between high and low intensity bunches, the system is capable of working in hybrid filling modes. In parallel, online applications were integrated into the control system to allow measuring the tunes by selectively exciting a single bunch, damping and growth rates, and analysing the bunch by bunch data in frequency or time domain for post-mortem purposes. Future plans including installation of a horizontal stripline and a noise reduction by avoiding the baseband conversion of the beam signal are also discussed.