Commissioning of the European XFEL Injector

The European XFEL Injector consists of an L-Band RF photoinjector, a TESLA type 1.3 GHz module, a 3rd harmonic RF section, a laser heater and an extensive diagnostic section to determine projected and slice properties of the beam. The commissioning of the complete system has been started in December 2015 after several years of construction. We will report on commissioning results and perspectives for the later XFEL operation. THE EUROPEAN XFEL FACILITY The European XFEL is under construction in the Hamburg region, Germany. It will provide FEL radiation in the range from 260 eV up to 24 keV out of three undulator sections that can be operated simultaneously with 600 μs long bunch trains with 2700 bunches each, which are produced with a repetition rate of 10 Hz. The FEL is driven by a 17.5 GeV linear accelerator based on TESLA-type superconducting accelerator modules. The European XFEL is being realized as a joint effort of many partners. Eleven countries (Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Russia, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland) agreed on the foundation of an independent research organization – the European XFEL GmbH which cooperates closely with the research centre DESY and other organizations worldwide. The contributing partners are CNRS/IN2P3 (Orsay, France), CEA/IRFU (Saclay, France), DESY (Hamburg, Germany), INFN (Milano, Italy), NCBJ (Świerk, Poland), WUT (Wrocław, Poland), IFJ-PAN (Kraków, Poland), IHEP (Protvino, Russia), NIIEFA (St. Petersburg, Russia), BINP (Novosibirsk, Russia), INR (Moscow, Russia), CIEMAT (Madrid, Spain), UPM (Madrid, Spain), SU (Stockholm, Sweden), UU (Uppsala, Sweden), PSI (Villigen, Switzerland). Construction of the European XFEL started in early 2009; the commissioning of the completed linear accelerator is planned to start at the end of 2016. Figure 1: Model of the E-XFEL injector. The beam starts at the gun on the right and is presently stopped in the injector beam dump on the left.