• L. Giannessi, F. Ciocci, G. Dattoli, M. Del Franco, A. Petralia, M. Quattromini, C. Ronsivalle, E. Sabia, I.P. Spassovsky, V. Surrenti
  ENEA C.R. Frascati, Frascati (Roma)
• D. Alesini, M. Bellaveglia, M. Castellano, E. Chiadroni, L. Cultrera, G. Di Pirro, M. Ferrario, L. Ficcadenti, D. Filippetto, A. Gallo, G. Gatti, E. Pace, B. Spataro, C. Vaccarezza, C. Vicario
  INFN/LNF, Frascati (Roma)
• A. Bacci, V. Petrillo, A.R. Rossi, L. Serafini
  Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Milano
• M. Bougeard, B. Carré
  CEA, Gif-sur-Yvette
• F. Briquez, M.-E. Couprie, M. Labat
  SOLEIL, Gif-sur-Yvette
• A. Cianchi
  Università di Roma II Tor Vergata, Roma
• F. Frassetto, L. P. Poletto
  LUXOR, Padova
• G. Lambert
  LOA, Palaiseau
• G. Marcus, J.B. Rosenzweig
  UCLA, Los Angeles, California
• M. Moreno, M. Serluca
  INFN-Roma, Roma
• A. Mostacci
  Rome University La Sapienza, Roma
• J.V. Rau, V. Rossi Albertini
  ISM-CNR, Rome

SPARC is a single pass free electron laser test facility realized in collaboration between the main Italian research institutions and devoted to experiments of light amplification in different beam conditions. While the laser was commissioned in self amplified spontaneous emission (SASE) mode during the last year, the operation in seeded mode has been recently demonstrated. The amplifier has been seeded with the second harmonic of the Ti:Sa driver laser generated in a crystal and with higher order VUV harmonics generated in a gas cell. The comparison between seeded and unseeded FEL emission will be discussed. The laser has been also operated in a new SASE configuration with a strongly chirped longitudinal e-beam phase space resulting from the RF compression. The chirp has been compensated by accordingly tapering the undulator gaps. Spectra with and without taper have been collected. An increase of about a factor 5 of the pulse energy in combination with spectra with a single longitudinal coherence region have been detected in presence of the taper. The combination of the chirp with the input seed is under study.

• P. Craievich, S. Biedron, M. Ferianis, D. La Civita
  ELETTRA, Basovizza
• D. Alesini, L. Palumbo
  INFN/LNF, Frascati (Roma)
• L. Ficcadenti
  Rome University La Sapienza, Roma
• M. Petronio, R. Vescovo
  DEEI, Trieste

A RF deflector is a useful tool to completely characterize the beam phase space by means of measurements of the bunch length and the transverse slice emittance. At FERMI@Elettra, a soft X-ray next-generation light source under development at the Sincrotrone Trieste laboratory in Trieste, Italy, we are installing low-energy and high-energy deflectors. In particular, two deflecting cavities will be positioned at two points in the linac. One will be placed at 1.2 GeV (high energy), just before the FEL process starts; the other at 250 MeV (low energy), after the first bunch compressor (BC1). This paper concerns only the low-energy deflector. The latter was built over the past year in collaboration with the SPARC project team at INFN-LNF-Frascati, Italy and the University of Rome. In this paper we will describe the RF measurements performed to characterize the standing wave cavity before the installation in the FERMI@Elettra linac, and we will compare them with the simulations done using the electromagnetic code HFSS.