4GLS MOVES INTO SRD

In a very positive move, the SR Director Mike Chesters has taken 4GLS and the ERL Prototype project into the SRD fold. This will ensure full representation of both projects at senior levels. The work will remain a clearly identifiable separate activity and the cross-departmental working that is one of the characteristic features of the project will continue to be developed. The project will now be complemented by the strengths of SRD.

DARESBURY LAB DIRECTOR

At his staff talk on Friday 23rd of April, Colin Whitehouse pledged his enthusiastic support and total commitment to 4GLS. He is helping the Team improve and develop all aspects of the project and is encouraging rapid implementation of the ERL Prototype. Colin has also taken on the roles of project sponsor and chair of the ERL Prototype Project Board.

CRYOPLANT ORDER

The order for the ERL Prototype cryoplant has been placed with the Swiss company Linde. The cost is £1.082M and the plant is on a 13 month delivery from receipt of order. Further information on the cryoplant will be circulated in subsequent newsletters.

Corrigendum - 27/07/04

Report of the approval of the MCRTN in Newsletter No.2 has proved to be premature. In fact the FELCHA network proposal is currently on the reserve list for funding.

www.4gls.ac.uk

TWO RESEARCHERS TO BE FUNDED BY THE eu: Approval of an EU Marie Curie Research Training Network

A network entitled ‘VUV-soft X ray femtosecond FEL based Coherent Harmonic Generation’ (FELCHA) was approved by the EU last month. Although the exact details have still to be negotiated. The Network will be coodinated by Marie Emmanuelle Couprie (CEA, France) and it involves 4GLS staff, together with researchers at ENEA, MAX-Lab, BESSY, Sinchrotrone Trieste, Eindhoven Technical University , Hamburg University, TARTU University , Middle East Technical University , Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Polish Academy of Sciences and Brookhaven National Laboratory.

The work of the Network is split into three work packages. Task 1: New Ideas and Schemes, Task 2: Theory and Modelling and Task 3: From Technical Challenges and Experimental Tests Towards User Facilities.

The two posts are for a) a 3 year postdoc position based at Daresbury, which will be available for work (supervised by Frances Quinn) on novel beamline optics and diagnostics for high peak power, short pulse FEL sources in the extreme UV to soft X-ray regime and b) a PhD studentship, that will be part of the 4GLS project but based at Strathclyde. The student will work under the supervision of Brian McNeil on novel methods of generating atto-second pulses in free electron lasers using seeded pulse amplification.

The FELCHA network will investigate the harmonic generation approach for radiation up to 1 keV using three approaches. First, new ideas and FEL based innovative schemes aimed at the provision of short wavelength high quality sources will be analysed. Second, effort will be devoted to theoretical analysis and modelling (seeding, HG, benchmarking, alternative schemes, start-to-end simulations) of six European proposals. Finally, technical tests relevant to the generation and exploitation of the high quality output anticipated will be performed and user applications investigated. These studies will lead to a report to the scientific community for an approach to a stable FEL source, based on a seeded, harmonic generation based scheme, that will generate tuneable, high brilliance, short pulses (femtosecond range) with adjustable polarisation in the short wavelength radiation regime. Training aspects will include specific workshops for the emergence of new ideas, transfer of knowledge, and the organisation of a school.

Very recently, VUV FELs have been developed, for example Tesla-TTF Phase 1 ( Hamburg , Germany ), LEUTL ( Argonne , USA ) and the DUVFEL (Brookhaven Nat. Lab, USA ). Short wavelength FEL operation requires large gains and very high performance electron beams. Radiation pulses generated by the Self Amplified Spontaneous Emission (SASE) process have severe intensity fluctuations whereas Harmonic Generation (HG) emission offers higher quality photon pulses of good temporal coherence and smooth profile that would be generated in a more compact facility.

THE 5th 4GLS INTERNATIONAL ADVISORY COMMITTEE MEETING

The 5th IAC meeting took place at Daresbury Laboratory over March 25th and 26th. The committee were given presentations by 4GLS Team members on key aspects of the ERL Prototype and the lively discussions that followed enabled assumptions inherent in the design to be debated. Overall the IAC congratulated the Team on the progress made over the last six months and approved the ERL Prototype plans presented. Scientific issues surrounding 4GLS and the ERL Prototype were also discussed in a lively, informal way.

The notes from the meeting will be available shortly. The technical presentations are available on the 4GLS web pages www.4gls.ac.uk under ‘Meetings and Workshops’.

MAX-Lab/astEC Workshop

A one day workshop to explore potential collaborative R&D activities was recently held at Daresbury Laboratory. This first meeting was very informal and mainly aimed at scene-setting with a series of short presentations by representatives of each of the laboratories. Interactions between the labs have always been very positive and several areas of common interest were highlighted, for example developing free electron laser activities and innovative photon source development. The labs have already initiated a collaboration within a recent Framework 6 bid (on harmonic generation in FELs) and a decision on that is awaited. The next collaboration Workshop is planned for Lund in the Autumn.