VELA (FORMERLY EBTF) SIMULATIONS AND FIRST BEAM COMMISSIONING

VELA (Versatile Electron Linear Accelerator), formerly known as EBTF (Electron Beam Test Facility), at STFC Daresbury Laboratory, is a photoinjector test facility which will provide beam into two user areas for scientific and industrial applications. It is based on a 2.5 cell S-band RF photoinjector driven by a Ti:Sapphire laser. The design is aimed to deliver short bunches at 10250 pC charge with low transverse emittance to two user areas. We present updated beam dynamics simulations of VELA and show results from first beam commissioning.