The Centre has indigenously designed, developed, and commissioned two synchrotron radiation sources: Indus-1 and Indus-2, serving as a national facility. Indus-1 is a 450 MeV, 100 mA electron storage ring emitting radiation from mid-IR to soft x-ray with a critical wavelength of ~61 Å. Indus-2 is a 2.5 GeV electron storage ring designed for the production of x-rays. Synchrotron radiation emitted from its bending magnets has broad spectrum covering soft and hard x-ray regions with a critical wavelength of ~2 Å. With its circumference of 172.5 m, and beam energy of 2.5 GeV, Indus-2 is presently the largest and the highest energy particle accelerator in the country.

The Centre is pursuing several other key accelerator activities viz. development of a high energy proton accelerator for a spallation neutron source, electron accelerators for food irradiation and industrial applications, free electron lasers (FEL) in terahertz (THz) and infra-red (IR) spectral region, superconducting and magnetic materials required for accelerators, development of advanced technologies such as superconducting radio-frequency (SCRF) cavities and cryomodules, high power radio-frequency (RF) generators, cryogenics, magnets, ultrahigh vacuum, precision fabrication and control instrumentation to support the various R&D programmes.