A VUV free electron laser at the TESLA test facility at DESY

Abstract We present the layout of a single pass free electron laser (FEL) to be driven by the TESLA Test Facility (TTF) currently under construction at DESY. The TTF is a test-bed for high-gradient, high efficiency superconducting acceleration sections for a future linear collider. Due to its unrivaled ability to sustain high beam quality during acceleration, a superconducting rf linac is considered the optimum choice to drive a FEL. We aim at a photon wavelength of λ = 6 nm utilizing the TTF after it has been extended to 1 GeV beam energy. Due to lack of mirrors and seed-lasers in this wavelength regime, a single pass FEL and self-amplified spontaneous emission (SASE) is considered. A first test is foreseen at a larger photon wavelength. The overall design as well as both electron and photon beam properties are discussed.