FERMI FEL-1 Upgrade to EEHG

The Fermi free-electron laser (FEL) facility is operating since 2010 providing the user community with ultrashort pulses in the VUV- XUV range. Using the High Gain Harmonic Generation (HGHG) setup, nearly transform-limited pulses with gigawatt peak power are made available. Furthermore, several multicolor and coherent control schemes are possible and highly required from the user community. To meet the request of extending the spectral range over the whole water window, an upgrade strategy of the FERMI facility has recently initiated. During the first phase of the upgrade, the single cascade FEL-1 will be adapted to operate either in Echo Enabled Harmonic Generation (EEHG) or in HGHG. Required modifications can be achieved with limited impact on FERMI operations and will improve FEL-1’s spectral range, spectral quality and flexibility. The second phase includes modification of the FEL-2 setup and will benefit from the experience gained with phase 1. The two phases will proceed in parallel to the linac upgrade aiming at extending the beam energy to 1.8 GeV. We report here details on the upgrade of the FEL-1 foreseen to provide light to users in the new configuration by spring 2023.
Proceedings of the 13th International Particle Accelerator Conference, IPAC2022, Bangkok, Thailand