Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

The Advanced Light Source (ALS) is a third generation synchrotron light source located at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). There was an increasing demand at the ALS for additional high brightness hard x-ray beamlines in the 7 to 40 keV range. Inresponse to that demand, the ALS storage ring was modified inAugust 2001. Three 1.3 Tesla normal conducting bending magnets were removed and replaced with three 5 Tesla superconducting magnets (Superbends). The radiation produced by these Superbends is an order of magnitude higher in photon brightness and flux at 12 keV than that of the 1.3 Tesla bends, making them excellent sources of hard x-rays for protein crystallography and other hard x-ray applications. At the same time the Superbends did not compromise the performance of the facility in the VUV and softx-ray regions of the spectrum. The Superbends will eventually feed 12 new beam lines greatly enhancing the facility's capability and capacity in the hard x-ray region. The Superbend project is the biggest upgrade to the ALS storage ring since it was commissioned in 1993. In this paper we present an overview of the Superbend project, its challenges and the resulting impact on the ALS.