Wayforlight: The Catalogue of European Light Sources

Wayforlight.eu is a user-oriented web-portal integrating all European light sources. It offers a standardized database to retrieve up-to-date information on the facilities, beamlines and their instrumentation. A set of advanced search tools allow filtering by scientific discipline, technique and the most relevant parameters used in experiments.

The previous version of the portal only included the synchrotron and free electron laser facilities participating in the EC's 7th Framework Programme CALIPSO project. Thanks to the Horizon 2020 EUCALL project, the database has now reached a broader scope and includes also optical laser sources that provide access to secondary sources in the XUV and X-ray range, among them the majority of Laserlab-Europe's facilities, thus benefiting varied and growing research communities. Users can now browse more than 300 beamlines at 38 facilities, fine-tuning their search for the most suitable and complementary instruments for their future experiments.

The new, augmented database was designed and realized at Elettra Sincrotrone Trieste. It offers a set of Advanced Programming Interfaces (APIs) allowing the automatic synchronization of the information provided by each facility. This ensures standardization of the technical specifications and avoids multiple data entry into different platforms, favoring the long-term sustainability of the catalogue. Current discussions on interoperability also involve the FELs of Europe association, the MERIL community and the CatRIS Horizon 2020 project.

Within the Horizon2020 CALIPSOplus project, Wayforlight has been enriched with two sections dedicated to academic and industrial users, respectively. Industry can easily find useful information in a multi-language section presenting the resources available at the various light sources as well as their industrial liaison office direct contacts. In the future, facilities offering access also to lasers working in the visible range will be included.

The portal is being constantly developed and discussed with the facility stakeholders and potential new partners. In this respect, a pilot project is also planned within the League of European Accelerator Based Photon Sources (LEAPS) initiative, grouping all accelerator-based European light sources towards a European Technology Roadmap.

A catchy teaser video will guide you through the main features of the wayforlight.eu portal, and a series of short video tutorials will follow in the next months.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ra3kJ7QT2eA

The work was conducted by a team of people at several institutions under the leadership of Cecilia Blasetti, Elettra Sincrotrone Trieste. Contact:

Reference

C. Blasetti, I. Andrian, F. Billè, E. Coghetto, S. Deiuri, D. Favretto, M. Turcinovich, R. Pugliese, E. Osmenaj, G. Appleby, A. Froideval, U. Pietsch, A. Sanchez, N. Valls Vidal, E. Mitchell, N. Rabhi, S. Aogaki, Z. Kasik, F. Canova, F. Gliksohn, D. Stozno, J. Michel, D. Normand, R. Brancaleon, G. Paro, M. Tinta and D. Zotti, "Wayforlight: The Catalogue of European Light Sources", Synchrotron Radiation News 32, 35 (2019), DOI:10.1080/08940886.2019.1582291