ESS is pleased to invite the European scientific community to contribute input to a roadmap for instruments beyond the 15 currently under construction. This roadmap will guide future developments of the instrument suite, ensuring that ESS supports a versatile science portfolio in the decades to come. The call will be open for one year.
In order to serve the neutron community and maintain European competitiveness for a long time, ESS is developing an instrument roadmap to guide future developments of the instrument suite. The roadmapping process will rely on input from the community, ensuring that the instrument suite maintains relevance and excellence, supporting a versatile science portfolio in the decades to come.
As a first step, we are pleased to hereby invite research teams to provide input to this process in the form of conceptual instrument ideas to complement the first 15 instruments currently under construction. This call will be open for one year, after which the proposed instrument concepts will be reviewed by experts outside and inside the ESS organisation. The review will focus on how the proposed additional instruments would complement both the scientific capability of the first 15 and the experimental capacity required by the community going forward, while also weighing in upgrade options available to the initial suite of instruments.
After a first version of the roadmap is established members of the community will be invited to join consortia around the new instrument concepts. These will then be developed further together with ESS according to the plan laid out in the roadmap.
Implementation of this roadmap will be incorporated as an integral part of steady-state operations. The financing of these future instruments is not yet specified, but upgrades and expansions are a natural part of any long-term plan for a large facility like ESS.
This call marks the start of a robust, collaborative process that can be utilised for future upgrades and expansions of ESS, laying the groundwork for a continuously relevant and competitive neutron instrument suite for Europe.
To learn more about how to be a part of this process and propose an instrument idea, please see our roadmap webpage or contact us at instrumentroadmap@ess.eu.