Can scientists from Poland use the ESRF and the ILL?

Why membership matters

The ESRF and the ILL are owned and funded by groups of countries. Scientists from those countries are the facilities’ main users, and the rules reflect that. The ESRF states that users from non-contracting countries can get beam time either by collaborating with groups from contracting countries or, in their own right, only through a management contingency quota and only for proposals of exceptional scientific quality or of exceptional technical benefit to synchrotron radiation.

The ILL has a similar principle, its “two-thirds rule”: at least two-thirds of the proposers must be affiliated to institutions in its associate or scientific member countries. Proposals that fail the test are still reviewed, but they are generally not allocated standard beam time. For a Polish group, membership means it can apply on its own.

Poland at the ESRF

Poland signed its first agreement with the ESRF on 26 April 2004, as a scientific associate with a 0.6% share. Professor Jacek Kossut, then director of the Institute of Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences, signed for Poland. The ESRF’s announcement at the time noted that scientists from 15 Polish institutions had already applied for beam time and that Poland accounted for 1.3% of the proposals received for the second half of 2004.

On 20 December 2016 a new agreement was signed between the ESRF and the Institute of Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences, which coordinates a national consortium of Polish institutions interested in using the synchrotron. The consortium raises the funds for Poland’s contribution, set at 1% of the ESRF budget, and helps Polish researchers with information, training and proposal writing. On the ESRF’s current list of partners Poland appears among the scientific associates with that 1% share, beside members such as France (27.5%) and Germany (24%) (status as of 3 November 2026). Who runs the ESRF and how it began is on The European Synchrotron.

How a proposal at the ESRF works

Polish scientists may submit proposals on their own or together with colleagues from other countries. The standard deadlines are 1 March and 10 September. Each proposal goes to a review committee for the group of beamlines it asks for; the ESRF’s pages put the number of these committees at 12 in one place and 13 in another. Reviewers grade proposals from 0 to 5.5 on scientific merit, 5.5 being the top score, and the committees, which meet in April and October, rank them for each beamline. Beam time is then allocated on scientific merit, provided the experiment is technically feasible and safe.

Approved Polish projects get the same technical help as those of other associates, and, as the consortium’s guide puts it, users from Poland are reimbursed for travel and accommodation during the experiment in Grenoble under the ESRF’s rules. Companies are a separate case: they can buy confidential beam time directly.

Poland at the ILL

At the neutron source, Poland is one of thirteen countries that have signed scientific membership agreements, and has been a member since 2006. Its national representative is the consortium “Neutrony dla Polskiej Nauki” (Neutrons for Polish Science), which groups Polish scientific institutions and is coordinated by the Henryk Niewodniczański Institute of Nuclear Physics in Kraków.

ILL proposals can be submitted all year, with two deadlines, in February and September. They are reviewed about eight weeks after each deadline by subcommittees of the ILL’s Scientific Council, with scientific excellence as the main criterion. The ILL then adjusts the allocation for national balance between its member countries, which it says typically affects 5 to 10% of the beam time. Competition is stiff: the ILL receives about 1,500 requests a year and can accept about half.

There is also a fast lane. The ILL reserves 5% of its beam time as Director’s Discretionary Time for urgent experiments that cannot wait for the next round. Any team with an excellent idea can apply at any time, including teams that do not meet the two-thirds rule, provided the proposal is truly world-class and on a particularly relevant topic. How the reactor produces its neutrons is explained in Why does Grenoble have a nuclear reactor that makes no electricity?

And at home?

Poland also has a synchrotron of its own. The National Synchrotron Radiation Centre SOLARIS in Kraków, opened on 21 September 2015, has a storage ring 96 metres round with an electron energy of 1.5 GeV, producing radiation from the infrared to X-rays. It was built as a replica of one of the two storage rings of the MAX IV laboratory in Lund, Sweden. The ESRF’s ring is 844 metres round and runs at 6 GeV; how that machine works is explained on From electron gun to beamline.

What this means in practice

For a researcher at a Polish university or institute, the route to Grenoble is a well-argued proposal, sent to the right call by the deadline. The national consortia are the first point of contact: they explain the rules, help with the paperwork and represent Poland in the two organisations. Rules, deadlines and contributions can change, so the facilities’ own user pages are the reference (status as of 3 November 2026).

Why Grenoble has both an X-ray source and a neutron source side by side, and why many projects need both, is explained on Two ways of seeing atoms. A Grenoble discovery that changed how the world measures electrical resistance is the subject of Was the quantum Hall effect discovered in Grenoble?