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The Jefferson Lab FEL driver accelerator - Energy Recovery Linac has provided a beam with average current of up to 9 mA and beam energy of 135 MeV. The high power beam operations have allowed developing and testing methods and approaches required to set up and tune such a facility simultaneously for the high beam power and high beam quality required for high performance FEL operations. In this contribution we briefly review this experience and outline problems that are specific to high current - high power non-equilibrium linac beams. While the original strategy for beam diagnostics and tuning have proven to be quite successful, some shortcomings and unresolved issues were also observed. The most important issues are the non-equilibrium (non-Gaussian) nature of the linac beam and the presence of small intensity - large amplitude fraction of the beam a.k.a. beam halo. Thus we also present a list of the possible beam halo sources and discuss possible mitigations means. We argue that for proper understanding and management of the beam halo large dynamic range (>106) transverse and longitudinal beam diagnostics can be used. We also present results of transverse beam profile measurements with the dynamic range approaching 105 and demonstrate the effect the increased dynamic range has on the beam characterization, i.e., emittance and Twiss parameters measurements. We also discuss near future work planned in this field and where the JLab FEL facility will be used for beam tests of the developed of new diagnostics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

DC high voltage photoemission electron guns with GaAs photocathodes have been used to produce polarized electron beams for nuclear physics experiments for about 3 decades with great success. In the late 1990s, Jefferson Lab adopted this gun technology for a free electron laser (FEL), but to assist with high bunch charge operation, considerably higher bias voltage is required compared to the photoguns used at the Jefferson Lab Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility. The FEL gun has been conditioned above 400 kV several times, albeit encountering non-trivial challenges with ceramic insulators and field emission from electrodes. Recently, high voltage processing with krypton gas was employed to process very stubborn field emitters. This work presents a summary of the high voltage techniques used to high voltage condition the Jefferson Lab FEL photoemission gun. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The JLab FEL is routinely operated with sub-picosecond bunches. The short bunch length is important for high gain of the FEL. Coherent transition radiation has been used for the bunch length measurements for many years. This diagnostic can be used only in the pulsed beam mode. It is our goal to run the FEL with CW beam and a 74.85 MHz micropulse repetition rate, which, with the 135 pC nominal bunch charge corresponds to the beam average current of 10 mA, Hence it is very desirable to have the possibility of making bunch length measurements when running CW beam with any micropulse frequency. We use a Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) interferometer, which is essentially a Michelson interferometer, to measure the spectrum of the coherent synchrotron radiation generated in the last dipole of the magnetic bunch compressor upstream of the FEL wiggler. This noninvasive diagnostic provides bunch length measurements for CW beam operation at any micropulse frequency. We also compare the measurements made with the help of the FTIR interferometer with data obtained using the Martin-Puplett interferometer. Results of the two diagnostics agree within 15 %. Here we present a description of the experimental setup, data evaluation procedure and results of the beam measurements. © 2006 American Institute of Physics [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new version of BPM electronics based on the AD8362 RMS detector, which is a direct RF to DC converter, is under development at the JLAB FEL. Each of these new BPM electronics utilizes an embedded ColdFire Microprocessor for data processing and communication with the EPICS control system via TCP/IP. The ColdFire runs RTEMS, which is an open source real-time operating system. The JLAB FEL is a SRF Energy Recovery LINAC capable of running up to 10 mA CW beam with a 74.85 MHz micropulse frequency. For diagnostic reasons and for machine tune up, the micropulse frequency can be reduced to 1.17 MHz, which corresponds to about 160 μA of beam current. It is required that the BPM system would be functional for all micropulse frequencies. By taking into account the headroom for the beam steering and current variations the dynamic range of the RF front end is required to be about 60 dB. A BPM resolution of at least 100 μm is required, whereas better resolution is very desirable to make it possible for more accurate measurements of the electron beam optics. Some results of the RF front end development are presented as well as the first measurements made with an electron beam. © 2006 American Institute of Physics [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the research center Rossendorf, the radiation source ELBE, based on a super conducting LINAC, is under construction. In the year 2001 the first accelerating module was commissioned. The electron beam parameters like emittance, bunch length, energy spread were measured. Here we present results of the measurements as well as the methods used to make the measurements. In the ELBE injector, where electron beam energy is 250 keV, the emittance was measured with the aid of a multislit device. Emittance of the accelerated beam was measured by means of quadrupole scan method and is 8 mmxmrad at 77 pC bunch charge. Electron bunch length was measured using the coherent transition radiation technique. At the maximum design bunch charge of 77 pC the RMS bunch length was measured to be 2 ps. A set of online diagnostic systems is also under development. One these include a system of stripline beam position monitors is also described here. A BPM resolution of about 10 µm was achieved using logarithmic amplifier as the core element of the BPM electronics. A system of beam loss monitors based on the RF Heliax cable working as an ionization chamber is intended to be another online diagnostic system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]