Instrumentation and Experimental Developments for the Beamlines at the Synchrotron SOLEIL.

This paper presents an overview of the instrumentation and experiments developed for the beamlines at Synchrotron SOLEIL in France. Currently fourteen beamlines are opened to users out of the twenty six scheduled. About half of the beamlines cover the soft x-rays region using spectroscopy and imagery techniques. The second half covers the hard x-rays field studying diffraction of matter. Some sample environments carried out for beamlines, for biology, chemistry and surface sciences are described. For the soft x-rays beamlines, carbon contamination of optics is a crucial issue. Different experiments are currently under study in order to reduce or even avoid this effect. Other studies relate to the improvement of metrological methods for beamline optics, to the reduction of vibrational effects for the microbeams and development of computer control for diffractometers. The various types of instruments and experiments will be presented both with an overview of the status of the beamlines in operation and under construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]