Approximately two years ago, Germany decided to give the BESSY-I (Berliner Elektronen-Spiecherring für Synchrotronstrahlung), an 800 MeV synchrotron, fully functioning since 1982 in Berlin, to the region of Middle East. The Middle East Synchrotron now known by the acronym SESAME (Synchrotron-light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East) achieved a major milestone with the selection of a site in Jordan at a meeting of the SESAME Interim Council in Amman, Jordan during June 2000. SESAME will be the upgraded reincarnation of BESSY-I.

This will be the first synchrotron light source in the Middle East and should serve as a seed for a regional international research centre, open to scientists in the region and beyond. An account of events leading to these very significant developments is presented. Several other relocated synchrotrons are mentioned briefly along with some upcoming synchrotrons.

The need for creation of "Accelerator and Beam Physics Forums" is also dealt with briefly. A synchrotron source is an exceedingly powerful source of light based on the technology of particle accelerators. Bundles of charged-particles (usually electrons) circulate for several hours inside a ring-shaped, long tube under high vacuum. Synchrotron Radiation is the electromagnetic radiation emitted when charged-particles travel in curved paths. For high-energy electrons curving in the magnetic field of the storage rings, this radiation is extremely intense over a broad range of the electromagnetic spectrum. The high intensity over a very broad-spectrum range and certain other properties (including, collimation, polarization, pulsed-time structure, partial coherence, high-vacuum environment, etc.) make synchrotron radiation a very powerful tool for a variety of applications in basic and applied research and technology.

It is particularly important in those parts of the electromagnetic spectrum where laser sources are unavailable. The emitted radiation is collected by many different beam lines connected to the ring and conveyed to the experimental chambers. Thus, the facility is simultaneously exploited by dozens of user groups.

The applications of synchrotron radiation span a wide range of domains in fundamental science, applied research. and industrial technology. There are not very many synchrotron facilities to meet the demands of users. This is primarily due to the high costs and the required technological expertise. Around the world there are currently about fifty storage rings in operation as synchrotron radiation sources, located in twenty-three countries. About a dozen are under construction and another dozen or so are being planned.

This small list leaves not only many countries but whole regions (such as Middle East, Continents of Africa and Australia) without a single synchrotron facility. Jordan will join this elite group of countries possessing a synchrotron light source due to Germany's generous gift of BESSY-I. BESSY-I is to be replaced by the more powerful BESSY-II, a 1900 MeV synchrotron located in another part of Berlin.

Germans are well-known for their environmentally responsible attitude towards reusing and recycling, and now they have very successfully extended that attitude to the large-scale research facilities! The idea of donating the BESSY-I Synchrotron came from Herman Winick of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) in California, a member of the Machine Advisory Committee of BESSY-II, and the fellow committee member Gustav-Adolf Voss, a former director of Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY) in Hamburg, Germany.

Now that the SESAME site has been selected, a controlled and documented dismantling of BESSY-I is now underway by a team of experts from Yerevan, Armenia and Russia. The required funds for the dismantling are coming from the SESAME Member Countries and UNESCO. It shall be shipped and upgraded to BESSY-Ia. The upcoming joint synchrotron radiation facility, which would be the first regional centre for cooperation in basic research in the Middle East, will also serve as a seed for an International Centre built around the facility.

SESAME will be located at the Al-Balqa' Applied University in Al-Salt and will be open to scientists from any country in the region or elsewhere. Because of this openness, organizers see its potential as not only a world-class research centre, but also as a politically important example of scientific cooperation in the region.

Such a centre has been long overdue and it shall be the first of its kind in the region.

The Centre will be operated and supported by its eleven member countries (Armenia, Cyprus, Egypt, Greece, Iran, Israel, Jordan, Morocco, Oman, Palestine and Turkey) with support from countries including, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, Sweden, Switzerland and the USA. Other countries which have expressed an interest to join this new fount of science and medium of international cooperation include Bahrain, Tunisia and Yemen.

It is hoped that the new centre will be able to mirror the CERN in stimulating regional research collaboration. Very much like CERN, SESAME is under the very valuable political umbrella of UNESCO and is expected to promote science and foster international cooperation. A broad-spectrum of planned research programmes include, structural molecular biology, molecular environmental science, surface and interface science, micro-electromechanical devices, X-ray imaging, archaeological microanalysis, materials characterization, and medical applications.

It took an effort of several years for the idea of donation to be set on course and to evolve from a vision to a system. A considerably significant point to this state of progress was the "Sinai Physics Meeting" held at the Egyptian resort of Dahab, on the Gulf of Aqaba, in November 1995. This historic Meeting was conceived by the Italian physicist Sergio Fubini from the University of Turin, which led directly to the formation of the Middle East Science Collaboration (MESC) in 1997. MESC constitutes a network of scientists promoting research cooperation between Europe, USA and the Middle East. The idea of relocating BESSY-I was further taken through the MESC in a series of meetings held under the auspices of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN), Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (Abdus Salam ICTP) to name a few.

Herwig Schopper, former Director-General of CERN and an active member of MESC is the President of the SESAME Project's Interim Council. Koichiro Matsuura, soon after resuming the office of the Director-General of UNESCO, had very generously underwritten an additional amount of US $ 400,000 to expedite the project. Jordan's King Abdullah II has pledged US $ 1 million a year for five years and the member countries are expected to contribute US $ 50,000 per year for the three years of construction. The installation and upgrading of the synchrotron are estimated at about US $ 20 million. A similar amount is required over the next five years for installing and equipping ten beam lines. Annual operating costs are expected to be about US $ 3.5 million. SESAME is expected to come on-line by 2003.

This is not the first time that a synchrotron was donated and relocated, thanks to the generous support of those in charge of the original facilities. Recently the Japanese donated a 1000 MeV synchrotron to Thailand. Thus, the Asia-Pacific region became the birthplace for the Era of Relocated Synchrotrons. Located 250 km northeast of Bangkok in the city of Nakhon Ratchasima, the Siam Photon Source is Thailand's first synchrotron light facility and is intended to serve scientists throughout Southeast Asia.

The original synchrotron light source, called SORTEC, was located in Tsukuba Science City, near KEK, Japan's High Energy Accelerator Research Organization. Thailand's Ministry of Science, Technology, and Environment got the machine gratis and is investing about US $ 15 million to move and upgrade it. This includes the doubling of the circumference to
81 m and tailoring the machine to produce narrow bright beams of soft
X-rays and ultraviolet radiation. Scientists from the KEK have helped in the redesign and are training the scientists from Thailand to operate their new facility. Professor Tokehiko Ishii, the retired Director of the Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory at University of Tokyo was the key figure in orchestrating the donation. He is also overseeing the technical and scientific aspects of the transfer and upgrading of the synchrotron.

The plan is to use the Siam Photon Source for physics and chemistry research, with some industrial research in semiconductors, medicine, pharmaceuticals, and agriculture. The Siam Photon Source is scheduled to go on-line in 2002.

A Dutch accelerator and storage ring used for nuclear physics is being moved to Dubna, to add to Russia's Synchrotron capability. The original facility was located at Institute of Nuclear Physics and High Energy Physics (NIKHEF) in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. This will be dubbed the 1200 MeV "Dubna Synchrotron Radiation Source (DELSY)", located at the Joint Institute of Nuclear Research (JINR) in Dubna.

It is disheartening to note that many countries from the Middle East have yet to participate in the novel project of SESAME. These countries are missing an excellent opportunity in the arena of International Scientific Collaboration. Same is the sad/sorry state of affairs for countries in rest of Asia and the continent of Africa. Many of these countries have had very old ties with the countries of the Middle East since very ancient times. In recent decades, these ties have been further strengthened by their large presence in the region, leading to active economic collaboration. They could have taken a keen interest in the SESAME. Nature, in one of its editorials, aptly advised, "... any potential funder is not to hold back, for this would be a worthwhile investment. Initiatives such as this do not come around often. When they do, they should be supported unhesitatingly" .

Scientific cooperation across geographical and cultural borders helps stimulate not only the advancement of ideas in the professional field, but also the building of lasting bridges and the establishment of contacts on the personal and more importantly the international level. The costs involved for participation are not much, for any country.

Here, it would be worthwhile to recall earlier attempts (though unsuccessful and now almost forgotten) to build institutions (including, synchrotron radiation facilities) in the Middle East. The originator of these attempts was none other than Abdus Salam, a co-winner of the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics, the founder and long-time director of ICTP (recently renamed in his honour as Abdus Salam ICTP) and a humanitarian who devoted much of his life to uplifting the status of science and technology in the third world. Salam dreamed of creating twenty international centres like the ICTP, spread throughout the world. ICTP attracts thousands of visitors every year, mostly from the developing countries for which it was created. For the period 1970-1998, Nationals from the Middle East have been benefitted by about 2,500 visits amounting to about 3,500 person-months.

As part of that vision, he actively promoted the idea of advancing the cause of science and technology in the Middle East, not only by having researchers from the region work with their colleagues in the developed world, but also by having the region develop its own facilities including a synchrotron laboratory!

In May 1983, at the Symposium on the Future Outlook of the Arabian Gulf University, held in Bahrain, Salam delivered a paper entitled The Gulf University and Science in the Arab-Islamic Commonwealth, in which he reminded his listeners that "we forget that an accelerator like the one at CERN develops sophisticated modern technology at its furthest limit. I am not advocating that we should build a CERN for Islamic countries. However, I cannot but feel envious that a relatively poor country like Greece has joined CERN, paying a subscription according to the standard GNP formula. I cannot rejoice that Turkey, or the Gulf countries, or Iran, or Pakistan seem to show no ambition to join this fount of science and get their men catapulted into the forefront of the latest technological expertise. Working with CERN Accelerators brings at the least this reward to a nation, as Greece has had the perception to realize".

He then went on to make the following points: I have mentioned an international laboratory in materials sciences for Bahrain, with specialisation in microelectronics and modern electronic communications, including space satellite communication, to help also with the banking communications needed at Bahrain. Such a laboratory was in fact proposed for the University of Jeddah. The idea was to emphasise science transfer in addition to technology transfer and to create international laboratories in the fields of materials sciences, including surface physics and a laboratory with a synchrotron radiation light source. The facilities created would have been of the highest possible international order; the laboratories would have been opened to teams of international researchers, who would congregate and work at Jeddah, just as they congregate now at the great laboratories in Hamburg, Geneva or Paris.

SESAME envisages a road map for science, technology and cooperation in the Middle East, but at the same time, SESAME does not totally fulfill the dreams of Salam for several reasons.

Many countries from the Middle East have yet to participate. The driving force is coming from outside of Middle East and not from within.

The SESAME Training Committee at ICTP is coordinating programmes, which will enable the trainees to join research groups and technical teams at several synchrotron laboratories. They will get training in research and experience to work on the current technical issues relevant to the maintenance, running and repairing of a synchrotron light source. The participating laboratories include Elettra (Trieste), Daresbury Synchrotron Radiation Source (Daresbury), EMBL-DESY (Hamburg) and LURE (Paris).

An important facet for SESAME would be the training of potential users. It would be worthwhile to start a series of "Schools" on synchrotron radiation and related fields. The SESAME site would provide a good venue for such schools. These would train the potential users and more importantly promote international collaboration. I would like to further add, that the Accelerator and Beam Physics and associated technologies are not yet part of the regular university curriculum in most parts of the world! The learning of such an important interdisciplinary science is done to a very large extent individually and through the very few Schools when and where available.

We need to include Accelerator and Beam Physics in University curricula. In passing, it is to be noted that there are not many Accelerator and Beam Physics Associations/Societies in most parts of the world. When created, such Associations/Societies will provide the much-needed forums.

The Asian Committee for Future Accelerators (ACFA) actively encourages regional cooperation in accelerator science and technology. This organization was formed in 1996. The First Asian Particle Accelerator Conference (APAC-1998) was held at KEK under the auspices of the ACFA, stressing the importance of regional collaboration among Asian regions in the field of accelerator science and technology as well as accelerator-based science. The Second APAC was recently held in September 2001 in Beijing.

Globally speaking, the International Committee for Future Accelerators (ICFA), could provide an excellent framework for collaborations and forums. It is noteworthy to see how the ICFA Beam Dynamics Panel has contributed to the accelerator and beam physics. The well-attended and very regularly held ICFA Beam Dynamics Workshops are one of the proofs of its grand success.

It is to be noted that countries from the Middle East have yet to join the ICFA or/and ACFA. Several countries are in the process of building their own synchrotrons. Armenia is planning to build the 3.2 GeV CANDLE (Center for the Advancement of Natural Discoveries using Light Emission). There is the proposal to build the 3.0 GeV BOOMERANG under the Australian Synchrotron Research Programme (ASRP). Spain has a project for a 2.5 GeV National Synchrotron Laboratory (LLS) in Barcelona.

The upcoming synchrotron facilities at the dawn of the new millennium will be able to bridge the wide gap in several of the under-represented regions of the World Synchrotron Map. These, when built, shall immensely benefit the scientific community in the concerned regions by enhancing international cooperation and providing them the latest technological expertise. Among the upcoming synchrotrons, SESAME is a most international project and offers an excellent opportunity for participation and active international collaboration.

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