Abstract
The SwissFEL Injector Test Facility operated at the Paul Scherrer Institute between 2010 and 2014, serving as a pilot plant and testbed for the development and realization of SwissFEL, the X-ray Free-Electron Laser facility under construction at the same institute. The test facility consisted of a laser-driven rf electron gun followed by an S-band booster linac, a magnetic bunch compression chicane and a diagnostic section including a transverse deflecting rf cavity. It delivered electron bunches of up to 200 pC charge and up to 250 MeV beam energy at a repetition rate of 10 Hz. The measurements performed at the test facility not only demonstrated the beam parameters required to drive the first stage of an FEL facility, but also led to significant advances in instrumentation technologies, beam characterization methods and the generation, transport and compression of ultra-low-emittance beams. We give a comprehensive overview of the commissioning experience of the principal subsystems and the beam physics measurements performed during the operation of the test facility, including the results of the test of an in-vacuum undulator prototype generating radiation in the vacuum ultraviolet and optical range.
Highlights
The Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) is currently constructing SwissFEL, an X-ray Free-Electron Laser (FEL) designed to produce coherent, ultra-bright and ultra-short photon pulses in the wavelength range between 0.1 and 7 nm, with first pilot experiments scheduled for late 2017 [1,2]
Several FEL test facilities with varying objectives have operated at other labs, going back to the TESLA Test Facility (TTF) at DESY [4,5], the photoinjector test facility at DESY, Zeuthen (PITZ) [6], and the SLAC Gun Test Facility (GTF) [7], followed by the SPARC photoinjector [8,9] at INFN Frascati, the Shanghai Deep Ultraviolet FreeElectron Laser source (SDUV-FEL) [10], the SPring8 Compact SASE Source (SCSS) test accelerator at RIKEN [11,12], or, more recently, the PAL-XFEL injector test facility at the Pohang Accelerator Laboratory (PAL) [13,14], and further facilities are being constructed in this context, e.g., the CLARA test facility at Daresbury [15]
SLAC’s Linear Collider Test Accelerator (NLCTA) [16] has been used extensively for FEL studies, and reports on commissioning experience have been given for the injector of the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) at SLAC [18] and the FERMI project at Elettra Sincrotrone Trieste [19]
Summary
The Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) is currently constructing SwissFEL, an X-ray Free-Electron Laser (FEL) designed to produce coherent, ultra-bright and ultra-short photon pulses in the wavelength range between 0.1 and 7 nm, with first pilot experiments scheduled for late 2017 [1,2]. SLAC’s Linear Collider Test Accelerator (NLCTA) [16] has been used extensively for FEL studies (see, e.g., Ref. [17]), and reports on commissioning experience have been given for the injector of the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) at SLAC [18] and the FERMI project at Elettra Sincrotrone Trieste [19]
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
