• A. Zholents, G. Penn, J. Qiang, M. Venturini, R.P. Wells
  LBNL, Berkeley, California
• E. Kur
  UCB, Berkeley, California

Funding: This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231
The design of the linac delivering the electron bunches into ten independent soft x-ray free electron lasers (FELs) is presented. The bunch repetition rate in the linac is 1 MHz and the bunch repetition rate in each FEL beam line is 100 kHz. Various issues regarding machine layout and lattice, bunch compression, collimation, and the beam switch yard are discussed. Particular attention is given to collective effects. A demanding goal is to preserve both a low beam slice emittance and low slice energy spread during acceleration, bunch compression and distribution of the electron bunches into the array of FEL beamlines. Detailed studies of the effect of the electron beam microbunching resulting from longitudinal space-charge forces and coherent synchrotron radiation as the beam undergoes compression have been carried out and are presented.