History

In short:

	until 1964 Part of Nobel Institute of Physics
	until 1988 Part of Research Institute of Physics, AFI
	until 1993 Part of Manne Siegbahn Institute, MSI
	from 1993-07-01 Manne Siegbahn Laboratory, MSL
	between 1995-07-01 and 2003-12-31 MSL is a national research facility
	from 2004-01-01 MSL is a research centre at Stockholm University

In more detail:

The institute in 1939

The institute was transformed into a government organisation in 1964 and was then given the name Forskningsinstitutet för atomfysik, with the abbreviation AFI, and in English it was called the Research Institute for Physics, later Research Institute of Physics. In 1988 the name was changed to Manne Siegbahninstitutet för fysik or the Manne Siegbahn Institute of Physics.

In 1993, the institute was split into groups that were organisationally (but in most cases not physically) transferred to the Stockholm University and the Royal Institute of Technology. The accelerator division of the Manne Siegbahn Institute of Physics, where the CRYRING facility had now been built, changed its name to Manne Siegbahnlaboratoriet vid Stockholms universitet, the Manne Siegbahn Laboratory at Stockholm University.

In 1995, the laboratory received the status of a national research facility (at the time one out of four) under the Swedish Research Council, and our name is since then simply Manne Siegbahnlaboratoriet, the Manne Siegbahn Laboratory. The laboratory is still hosted by the Stockholm University and remains in the institute buildings, but the other research groups of the former institute are since 2001 relocated to the new Albanova University Center.

In 2004, MSL lost is status as a national research facility, and from 2005 the laboratory is a centre under the Faculty of Natural Sciences at Stockholm University. According to current plans, CRYRING will be moved to the FAIR facility in Germany, where it will be used for deceleration of antiprotons and heavy ions. The laboratory is at present also constructing the new DESIREE double electrostatic storage ring.

Throughout this history, much of the research has made use of accelerated ion beams. The first accelerator was a cyclotron with 80 cm pole diameter in which the first beam was observed in 1939. It was followed by a 225-cm classical cyclotron in 1950 which accelerated deuterons to 25 MeV and later heavy ions up to neon to 11 MeV per nucleon. The cyclotron was dismantled in 1986 after the CRYRING project had been funded. In addition to the circular machines, the institute has had a number of electrostatic accelerators with terminal voltages up to 2 MV.

CRYRING is the name of the entire present accelerator facility, consisting of a CRYogenic electron-beam ion source, several smaller ion sources, a radio-frequency quadrupole intermediate accelerator, and a synchrotron and storage RING. The ring, has a 51.6 m circumference and accelerates light and heavy ions up to 96 (q/A)² MeV per nucleon (where q is the charge state and m the mass number of the ion). In December of 1990, the first beam was injected into the ring and made one turn, and the first stored beam was achieved in January 1991. CRYRING was since 1992 running as a user facility for research mainly in atomic and molecular physics. Operation for physics experiments ended in December 2009. In the spring of 2010 the ring was used for testing parts of the new extraction system that will be used at FAIR, and that concluded the era of CRYRING operation.