New Opportunities Offered by the ESRF to the Cultural and Natural Heritage Communities

For the past 20 years, the community of heritage scientists has frequently exploited the synchrotron radiation-based techniques offered at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF), Grenoble, France [Citation1]. X-ray imaging techniques (in particular, micro computed-tomography, µCT) are regularly employed to probe non-destructively the inner structure of objects and materials. In paleontology, this can offer information on the functioning and evolution of organs and organisms. In addition, analytical techniques such as X-ray fluorescence (XRF), X-ray powder diffraction (XRPD), and X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) are often used, alone or combined, for the chemical analysis of micro-fragments of historical manufactured materials. This can give clues about both the early days of objects (physical and chemical processes used in the production of artworks and the evolution of these skills in time and space) as well as the evolution/alteration of objects (nature of degradation products and environmental factors contributing to these degradations). The limited size of samples and their high heterogeneity often require access to micro and nano-probes. The new capabilities offered by the ESRF upgrade "EBS" (Extremely Brilliant Source), as well as instrumental developments at new and strongly refurbished beamlines, have motivated the organization of a dedicated "EBS-workshop" about cultural and natural heritage, which was held in January 2020 at the ESRF, attracting more than 150 participants, among which were 90 new ESRF users. Most of the talks were broadcast on the ESRF YouTube Channel and are still available (https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsWatK2_NAmyyA0n03OMJMAKobVIvow2D). Through scientific presentations, tutorials, and discussions, the objectives of the workshop were: To illustrate to expert and non-expert users the many capabilities offered by synchrotron radiation-based techniques for the study of natural and cultural heritage materials/objects; To present EBS and the related instrumental developments, highlighting the ground-breaking capabilities that will be offered through the ESRF upgrade phase 2 (thanks to the new source, new beamlines, and new instruments); To present and discuss the upstream and downstream challenges associated with these new instruments (e.g., access models and data analysis, data management...), which are fundamental for making the experiments a success. This was notably a very good opportunity to discuss the implementation of new beamtime access modes. This event has been fundamental in some of the developments detailed in the following.