ROLINHA: A beamline scale model for teaching physics at Sirius

A synchrotron accelerator consists of a storage ring in which electrons remain in a circular orbit at speeds close to that of light, while emitting the so-called synchrotron light, a highly collimated broad-spectrum beam of radiation. Tangentially to the accelerator’s storage ring are the beamlines, the experimental stations that collect the emitted synchrotron radiation and use it to illuminate samples in experiments that cover several areas of knowledge. The beamlines have a series of optical elements responsible for managing the beam properties (i.e., energy, photon flux, size, divergence, resolution, polarization, etc.), providing a beam with the characteristics required for the given experimental technique. This work shows the design of a beamline scale model developed at Sirius, the Brazilian synchrotron light source, intended for teaching physics. The scale model was named ROLINHA, a common bird in Brazil, following the pattern of Sirius beamlines, which are named after animals and plants from Brazilian fauna and flora. ROLINHA aims to illustrate in a didactic way how a real beamline works, using visible light. It uses an LED lamp as source and glass lenses, mirrors and a prism as optical elements, to allow the selection of different wavelengths (colors) for the focused beam. ROLINHA had its first version built in 2023 and has been used for several Sirius scientific outreach events, benefiting visitors, students of different ages, teachers and researchers. The optical design of the scale model, the automation of the components and its functionalities will be presented here in detail.