Meet the prototype of the new fast kicker for the SLS 2.0 upgrade project. But... what is a fast kicker?

The X-ray light of the Swiss Light Source SLS is generated by electrons travelling at almost the speed of light around a 288-metre circular path called the electron storage ring. Over time, some of the electrons are lost in the race. To compensate for this loss, a complex system of devices produce, accelerate, guide and inject “fresh” electrons into the ring every few minutes. This process is called "top-up injection”. The fast kicker, the last pulsed beam deflector in the injection chain, positions the new electrons in a correct orbit with minimum disturbance of the rest of the beam.

The prototype is in France, at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF), where our colleagues have agreed to test it in their accelerator during the "dark" period of the SLS, providing important and mutually beneficial information.