China' s High Energy Photon Source (HEPS), the country' s first high-energy synchrotron radiation light source and soon one of the world' s brightest fourth-generation synchrotron radiation facilities, began construction in Beijing' s Huairou District on June 29, 2019.

As one of the China' s key scientific and technological infrastructure projects under the 13^th Five-year Plan, HEPS will be an important platform for original and innovative research in basic science and engineering.

HEPS is being built in Huairou' s Science City, located in northern Beijing, and will comprise accelerators, beamlines and auxiliary facilities. Prof. WANG Yifang, director of the Institute of High Energy Physics, said the overall shape of HEPS looked like a gigantic magnifier. “It means HEPS is a powerful tool for characterizing micro-structures.”

The storage ring of HEPS will be 1360.4m in circumference, with the electron energy of 6 GeV and the brightness of higher than 1×10²² phs/s/mm²/mrad²/0.1%BW.

"By using the 7BA (7-Bending achromat) lattice structure, the horizontal emittance of the electron beam could be smaller than 60 pm·rad, which is the main feature of fourth-generation diffraction limited light sources," said Prof. QIN Qing, HEPS project manager.

HEPS can accommodate more than 90 high-performance beamlines and stations. In the first phase, 14 public beamlines and stations will be available for researchers in the fields of engineering materials, energy and environment, medicine and food industry, petrochemistry and chemical industry, etc.

HEPS will provide high-brightness and high-coherence photon beam with a high energy up to 300 keV, while offering a nm level spatial resolution, ps level time resolution, and meV level energy resolution research platform.

In addition to providing conventional technical support for general users, HEPS will also offer an advanced technology support for research related to national development and key industrial needs.

HEPS will serve as a multi-dimensional, real-time, in-situ characterization platform for analyzing engineering materials and their structures. It can be used to observe the whole process of their evolution and provide information for the design and regulation of functional materials. HEPS will also become an important platform for international cooperation and basic science research.

Proposed in early 2016, HEPS was officially approved by the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), China's top economic planner, on Dec. 15, 2017. The estimated construction period is six and a half years.