Ten Years of Compact Synchrotron Light Source Aurora

From mid 1980’s, we have been developing compact SR rings named AURORA. The first one, AURORA-1 (A1), which employed a superconducting magnet to make the ring as compact as possible, has unique features came from its constitution, one circular 360° bending with no focus magnets. After observed first SR in 1989, we continued to improve the whole system, then transferred to Ritsumeikan Univ. in 1995. It has been in routine operation since then. In parallel with the A1’s improvements, we started developing another concept in early 1990’s. We adopted normal conducting magnets instead of superconducting’s to the second, AURORA-2 (A2), keeping compactness by increasing the bending field, 2.7 Tesla, as high as somewhat comparable to the superconducting’s. The most outstanding feature of A2 lies in the bending magnets, whereas the configuration of A2, racetrack, is very conventional. There are two versions in A2; one pursued compactness, the same purpose as A1, for X-ray lithography, and the other modified for scientific research taking advantage of its capability of accommodating insertion devices (ID’s). In 1997, the latter was installed in Hiroshima Univ. as HiSOR in combination with two undulators. On the contrary, the former has been in commissioning at our Tanashi Works.