• H. Hama
  LNS, Sendai

More than 20 years ago, D.A.G. Deacon proposed an isochronous storage ring for FEL to avoid bunch heating and decreasing instantaneous gain [1]. Some of low momentum compaction (alpha) operations have been carried out, and recently coherent infrared radiation are observed on a 3rd generation light source. Because the 3rd generation rings are optimized to obtain very low emittance beam, the dispersion function in the arc sections are much reduced by introducing large bending radius, so that those are very big machines. Meanwhile N.A. Vinokurov et al. recently proposed a ring type SASE FEL based on a complete isochronous bending transport [2]. At least, experimental and theoretical study of the isochronous ring so far suggests nonlinear effects resulted from higher order dispersion and chromaticity declines the "complete" isochronous system. On the other hand, in a wavelength region of THz, tolerance of the path length along a turn of the ring seems to be within our reach. A concept to preserve of a form factor of microbunch or very short bunch by using no-dispersion bend for a ring source of THz coherent radiation and its extension toward short wavelength and SASE FEL will be discussed.

[1] D.A.G. Deacon, Phys. Rep. 76 (1981) 349. [2] N.A. Vinokurov, O.A. Shevchenko, Nucl. Instr. and Meth. A 528 (2004) 491.

• T. Tanaka
  RIKEN Spring-8, Hyogo
• Y. Asano
  JAEA, Ibaraki-ken
• H. Baba, T. Bizen, Z. Chao, H. Ego, S. Eguchi, S. Goto, T. Inagaki, S. Inoue, D. Iwaki, K. Kase, Y. Kawashima, H. Kimura, S. Kojima, T. Kudo, N. Kumagai, X. Marechal, S. Matsui, T. Ohata, K. Onoe, Y. Otake, T. Seike, K. Shirasawa, N. Shusuke, T. Takagi, T. Takashima, K. Tamasaku, R. Tanaka, K. Togawa, R. Tsuru, S. Wu, M. Yabashi, S. Yoshihiro
  JASRI/SPring-8, Hyogo
• T. Fukui
  Kyoto IAE, Kyoto
• T. Hara, T. Ishikawa, H. Kitamura, T. Shintake
  RIKEN Spring-8 Harima, Hyogo
• H. Matsumoto
  KEK, Ibaraki
• S. Takahashi
  LNS, Sendai

Funding: Representing the SCSS project team

SCSS, an acronym of "SPring-8 Compact SASE Source", is an X-ray FEL project under planning to be build at the SPring-8 site. R&Ds for accelerator components such as the pulsed-DC electron gun, C-band main linac, and in-vacuum short period undulator have been performed and almost completed. Before construction of the X-ray FEL facility, a prototype accelerator with the electron energy of 250 MeV is being built to demonstrate the concept of SCSS. In this presentation, status of the R&Ds for each accelerator component will be presented together with an overview of the 250-Mev prototype accelerator.

• H. Tomizawa, T. Asaka, H. Dewa, H. Hanaki, T. Kobayashi, A. Mizuno, S. Suzuki, T. Taniuchi, K. Yanagida
  JASRI/SPring-8, Hyogo
• F. Matsui
  ,

We have been studying photocathode single-cell pillbox rf gun for future light sources since 1996. We achieved a rmaximum field gradient of 187 MV/m with chemical-etching processed cavity. We have been developed stable and highly qualified UV-laser source for the rf gun intensively last 3 years. The UV-laser pulse (10 Hz) energy is up to 850 uJ/pulse. The energy stability (rms) of laser has been improved down to 0.2~0.3 % at the fundamental and 0.7~1.3% at the third harmonic generation. This stability is held for two months continuously. In this improvement, we just passively stabilized the system in a humidity-controlled clean room. On the other hand, the ideal spatial and temporal profiles of a shot-by-shot single laser pulse are essential to suppress the emittance growth of the electron beam from the rf gun. We prepared a deformable mirror for spatial shaping, and a spatial light modulator based on fused-silica plates for temporal shaping. With a deformable mirror, we obtained an emittance of1.6<pi> mm mrad with beam energy of 28 MeV, holding its net charge to 0.1 nC/bunch. The both adaptive optics automatically optimize electron beam for lower emittance with a feedback routine.

• H. Hama, F. Hinode, M. Kawai, T. Tanaka
  LNS, Sendai

Funding: Supported partly by a Grant-in Aid for Scientific Research from Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, #17360035

As a result of simulation study so far, a specific feature has been found in the longitudinal dynamics in thermionic RF guns. At the beginning of beam extraction, the head of the electrons from a cathode is followed immediately by the electrons just behind, which is extracted by the higher electric field than that at the head of the beam train. Thus later electrons would get velocity faster than the head of the electrons, so that the electrons are expected to concentrates onto the head of the beam under certain conditions such as the gun geometry and the strength of the RF field. In order to investigate this velocity-bunching like effect, a prototype thermionic RF gun was designed and its characteristics have been studied by a 3-D simulation code based on a FDTD (finite difference time demain) method. The gun is consists of two independentlly power feeding S-band RF cavities, and can be operated at modes with different power ratio and phase between two RFs. This paper report the thermionic RF gun is expected to produce several hundreds femtosecond pulse containing approximately 0.1 nC, which may be a powerful tool to generate THz coherent radiation or FELs driver.

• D. Dowell, F. King, R.E. Kirby, J.F. Schmerge
  SLAC, Menlo Park, California

Funding: SLAC is operated by Stanford University for the Department of Energy under contract number DE-AC02-76SF00515.

Improving and maintaining the quantum efficiency (qe) of a metal photocathode in an s-band RF gun requires a process for cleaning the surface. In this type of gun, the cathode is typically installed and the system is vacuum baked to ~200&deg;C. If the qe is too low, the cathode is cleaned with the UV-drive laser. While laser cleaning does increase the cathode qe, it requires fluences close to the damage threshold and rastering the small diameter beam, both of which can produce non-uniform electron emission and potentially damage the cathode. This paper investigates the efficacy of a low-energy hydrogen ion beam to produce high-qe metal cathodes. Measurements of the qe vs. wavelength, surface contaminants using x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and surface roughness were performed on copper samples, and the results showed a significant increase in qe after cleaning with a 1keV hydrogen ion beam. The H-ion beam cleans an area approximately 1cm in diameter and has no effect on the surface roughness while significantly increasing the qe. These results and a comparison with theory as well as a scheme for installing a H-ion cleaner on an s-band gun are presented.

• J.-Y. Raguin, R.J. Bakker, K.S.B. Li, M. Pedrozzi
  PSI, Villigen

In the Low Emittance Gun (LEG) under development at PSI an extremely bright electron beam is produced from a field emission array and then rapidly accelerated in a diode configuration up to 1 MeV with gradients of the order of 250 to 500 MV/m. The electronic emission from such a cold cathode allows normalized intrinsic emittance below 0.1 mm.mrad well suited for X-ray FELs or linear collider applications. The diode is followed by an L-band RF-gun like cavity to further accelerate the beam. A third harmonic field is superposed to the fundamental [1] 1.5 GHz pi-mode field to minimize the RF emittance. We report here on the design of such a two-frequency RF cavity with some details on the RF coupling and possible tuning mechanisms. Beam dynamics studies, performed with PARMELA and the fully self-consistent code MAFIA, are presented and compared with the results obtained for an RF cavity excited with the fundamental frequency only.

[1] D.H. Dowell et al., Nucl. Instr. and Meth. A 528 (2004) 316.

• C. Limborg-Deprey
  SLAC, Menlo Park, California

Funding: SLAC is operated by Stanford University for the Department of Energy under contract number DE-AC02-76SF00515

If the laser pulse driving photoinjectors could be arbitrarily shaped, the emittance growth induced by space charge effects could be totally compensated for. In particular, for normal conducting RF guns the photo-electron distribution should approach a 3D-ellipsoidal shape. The emittance at the end of the injector would reduce to the combination of cathode emittance and RF emittance. We explore how the emittance and the brightness can be optimized for normal conducting photocathode RF gun depending on the peak current requirements. Techniques available to produce those ideal laser pulse shapes are also discussed.

• T.  Kamps, V. Duerr, K. Goldammer, D. Kraemer, P. Kuske, J. Kuszynski, D. Lipka, F. Marhauser, T. Quast, R. Richter
  BESSY GmbH, Berlin
• P. Evtushenko
  Jefferson Lab, Newport News, Virginia
• U. Lehnert, P. Michel, J. Teichert
  FZR, Dresden
• I. Will
  MBI, Berlin

Funding: Funded by the Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, the State of Berlin and the Zukunftsfonds Berlin

A superconducting rf photo electron injector (SRF gun) is currently under construction by a collaboration between BESSY, DESY, FZR and MBI. The project aims at the design and setup of an CW SRF gun including a diagnostics beamline for the ELBE FEL and to address R&D issues on low emittance injectors for future light sources such as the BESSY FEL. Of critical importance for the injector performance is the control of the electron beam parameters. For this reason a compact diagnostics beamline is under development serving a multitude of operation settings ranging from low-charge (77pC), low-emittance (1 pi mm mrad) mode to high-charge (2.5nC) operation of the gun. For these operation modes beam dynamics simulations are resulting in boundary conditions for the beam instrumentation. Proven and mature technology is projected wherever possible, for example for current and beam position monitoring. The layout of the beam profile and emittance measurement systems is described. For the bunch length, which varies between 5 and 50 ps, two schemes using Electro-optical sampling and Cherenkov radiation are detailed. The beam energy and energy spread is measured with an especially designed 180 degree spectrometer.

• J. Teichert, A. Arnold, H. Buettig, D. Janssen, U. Lehnert, P. Michel, K. Moeller, P. Murcek, Ch. Schneider, R. Schurig, F. Staufenbiel, R. Xiang
  FZR, Dresden
• T.  Kamps, D. Lipka, F. Marhauser
  BESSY GmbH, Berlin
• W.-D. Lehmann
  IfE, Dresden
• J. Stephan
  IKST, Drsden
• V. Volkov
  BINP SB RAS, Novosibirsk
• I. Will
  MBI, Berlin

A superconducting rf photo electron injector (SRF gun) is under development at the Forschungszentrum Rossendorf. The project aims at several issues: improvement of the beam quality for the ELBE superconducting electron linac, demonstration of feasibility of this gun type, investigation of critical components, and parameter studies for future application (BESSY-FEL, 4GLS). In 2005, a substantial progress has been made. The two 3.5-cell niobium cavities for the gun have been delivered from the company ACCEL. The main parts for gun cryostat like vacuum vessel, cryogenic and magnetic shields are ready. Test benches for the cathode cooling system and the cavity tuner are being assembled. The photo cathode preparation lab has been arranged, and the diagnostic beam line has been designed (see T. Kamps et al., this conference). After delivering the gun cavities, their rf properties are being measured at room temperature and the warm tuning is being carried out. The set-up for this treatment and measurement as well as the results will be presented.

• S. Schreiber
  DESY, Hamburg

The VUV-FEL is a free electron laser user facility being commissioned at DESY in Hamburg. In the current configuration, the linac accelerates an electron beam up to 800 MeV. The injector is a crucial part of the linac, since it has to generate and maintain a high brightness electron beam required for SASE operation. The injector includes a laser driven RF gun, a booster section, a bunch compressor, and diagnostic sections. The good performance of the injector was crucial for the first lasing of the VUV-FEL at a wavelength of 32 nm in January 2005. We report on the present layout of the injector, the properties of the electron beam and on upgrade plans scheduled in the near future.

• A. Oppelt, K. Abrahamyan, G. Asova, J.W. Baehr, G. Dimitrov, U. Gensch, H.-J. Grabosch, J.H. Han, S. Khodyachykh, G. Klemz, M. Krasilnikov, S. Liu, V. Miltchev, B. Petrosyan, S. Riemann, L. Staykov, F. Stephan
  DESY Zeuthen, Zeuthen
• W. Ackermann, W.F.O. Muller, S. Schnepp, T. Weiland
  TEMF, Darmstadt
• D. Alesini, M. Boscolo, G. Di Pirro, M. Ferrario, D. Filippetto, L. Palumbo, C. Vicario
  INFN/LNF, Frascati (Roma)
• V. Boccone
  Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Berlin
• L. Catani, E. Chiadroni, A. Cianchi
  INFN-Roma II, Roma
• K. Floettmann, S. Schreiber
  DESY, Hamburg
• T. Garvey
  LAL, Orsay
• M.V. Hartrott, E. Jaeschke, D. Kraemer, D. Lipka, F. Marhauser, R. Richter
  BESSY GmbH, Berlin
• P. Michelato, L. Monaco, C. Pagani, D. Sertore
  INFN/LASA, Segrate (MI)
• V.V. Paramonov
  RAS/INR, Moscow
• N. Pavel
  Humboldt University Berlin, Institut für Physik, Berlin
• J.R. Roensch, J. Rossbach
  Uni HH, Hamburg
• W. Sandner, I. Will
  MBI, Berlin
• I. Tsakov
  INRNE, Sofia

Funding: This work has been partly supported by the European Community, contract numbers RII3-CT-2004-506008 and 011935, and by the 'Impuls- und Vernetzungsfonds" of the Helmholtz Association, contract number VH-FZ-05.

Since December 2004, the photo injector test facility at DESY in Zeuthen (PITZ) has been upgraded. A normal conducting copper booster cavity has been installed and the diagnostics beamline has been strongly modified. An extended water cooling system has been installed and was successfully taken into operation. Actually, the new diagnostics elements are being commissioned. After the installation of the new 10 MW klystron in June/July, the gun can be conditioned towards higher average power, and the whole beamline including the booster will be taken into operation. First results from the commissioning phase including gun and booster conditioning are reported.

• T. Kii, T. Fukui, K. Kusukame, K. Masuda, Y. Nakai, H. Ohgaki, T. Yamazaki, K. Yoshikawa, H. Zen
  Kyoto IAE, Kyoto

We have studied on improvement of electron beam macropulse properties from a thermionic RF gun. Though a thermionic RF gun has many salient features, there is a serious problem that back-bombardment effect worsens quality of the beam. To reduce beam energy degradation by this effect, we tried to feed non-flat RF power into the gun. As a result, we successfully obtained about 1.5 times longer macropulse and two times larger total charge per macropulse. On the other hand, we calculated transient evolution of RF power considering non-constant beam loading. The beam loading is evaluated from time evolution of cathode temperature, by use of one dimensional heat conduction model and electron trajectories' calculations by a particle simulation code. Then we found good agreement between the experimental and calculation results. Furthermore, with the same way, we studied the electron beam output dependence on the cathode radius.

• K. Kusukame, T. Fukui, T. Kii, K. Masuda, Y. Nakai, H. Ohgaki, T. Yamazaki, K. Yoshikawa, H. Zen
  Kyoto IAE, Kyoto

Funding: Kyoto University,Institute of Advanced Energy

Thermionic RF guns show advantageous features compared with photocathode ones such as easy operation and much higher repetition rate of micropulses, both of which are suitable for their application to high average power FELs. They however suffer from the back-bombardment effect [1], i.e., in conventional RF guns, electrons are extracted from cathode also in the latter half of accelerating phase and tend to back-stream to hit the cathode, and as a result the macropulse duration is limited down to severalμsec Against this adverse effect in thermionic RF guns, introduction of the triode structure has been proposed [2], where the accelerating phase and amplitude nearby the cathode can be controlled regardless of the phase of the first accelerating cell in the conventional RF gun. Our one-dimensional particle simulation results predict that the back-bombardment power can be reduced by 99 % only with 30-40 kW RF power fed to the grid in the present triode structure with an optimal phase difference from the RF induced in the main accelerating cavities. We also carried out two-dimensional particle simulations to evaluate emittance of the refined RF gun.

[1] T.Kii et al.,Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research A 507 (2003) 340-344. [2] E. Tanabe et al., Proc. of 27th Linear Accelerator Meeting in Japan, Aug 7-9, 2002, Kyoto, Japan (in Japanese).

• H. Zen, T. Fukui, T. Kii, K. Kusukame, K. Masuda, Y. Nakai, H. Ohgaki, T. Yamazaki, K. Yoshikawa
  Kyoto IAE, Kyoto

Transverse phase space tomography [1] using a quadrupole magnet and a beam profile monitor is very useful for emittance measurements especially for non-Gaussian beams, since this method directly gives transverse phase space distributions. We have tried to apply the method to measure the beam emittance of our FEL driver Linac [2]. We found, however, this method suffers from both the energy spread of the beam and the reconstruction noise which deeply depends on the reconstruction algorithm. To obtain reliable results, numerical evaluation using PARMELA which simulates the beam profile in each rotation angle has been carried out. Several image reconstruction method, such as FBP method, ART method, and Ordered Subsets - Expectation Maximization (OS-EM) algorithm [3], have been applied to reconstruct the phase space distribution. We also have introduced a noise cut procedure, and evaluation of a tolerable energy spread where this method can be applied.

[1] C.B. McKee, et al., NIM A 358 (1995) 264. [2] K. Masuda, et al., Proceedings of the 2004 FEL Conference 450. [3] H.M. Hudson and R.S. Larkin, IEEE Trans. Med. Imaging, 13:601 (1994).

• S.J. Park, J.Y. Huang, I.S. Ko, J.-S. Oh, Y.W. Parc, P.C.D. Park, J.H. Park
  PAL, Pohang, Kyungbuk
• C. Kim
  POSTECH, Pohang, Kyungbuk
• X.J. Wang
  BNL, Upton, Long Island, New York
• D. Xiang
  TUB, Beijing

Funding: Work supported by the MOST and the POSCO.

The PAL XFEL, an X-Ray Free Electron Laser (XFEL) project based on the Self-Amplified Spontaneous Emission (SASE), is under progress at the Pohang Accelerator Laboratory (PAL). Successful completion of the project is expected to impose stringent requirements on the beam qualities such as the normalized emittance (< 1.2 mm-mrad) and the un-correlated energy spread (~10(-5)). This requires careful and systematic planning for ensuring the generation and the preservation of high-brightness beams in the whole machine. The PPI (Pohang Photo-Injector) is to achieve these requirements with high reliability and stability. In this article, we discuss various physics and engineering issues involved in the design and construction of the PPI. We also report on the R&D status of photo-cathode RF gun at the PAL.

• A.H. Lumpkin, W. Berg, M. Borland, N. Sereno
  ANL, Argonne, Illinois

Funding: Work supported by U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, under Contract No. W-31-109-ENG-38.

The interest in bunch compression to generate higher peak current electron beams with low emittance continues in the free-electron laser (FEL) community. At the Advanced Photon source (APS) we have both an rf thermionic gun and an rf photocathode (PC) gun on the S-band linac. At the 150-MeV point in the linac, we have a flexible chicane bunch compressor whose four dipoles bend the beam in the horizontal plane. There is also a vertical bend dipole after the chicane that allows measurement of energy and horizontal beam size at the imaging screen station to study possible effects on emittance due to coherent synchrotron radiation (CSR) in the chicane. A far-infrared (FIR) coherent radiation monitor is located downstream of the chicane as well. We have begun recommissioning of this device with coherent transition radiation (CTR), but we also have directly observed CSR from the bunch-compressed beam as it transits the vertical dipole and goes into the down leg. The unique geometry allows simultaneous tracking of bunch length, horizontal emittance, and energy distribution effects. Initial measurements of the CSR and CTR as a function of linac phase are described.

• J.W. Lewellen, J. Noonan
  ANL, Argonne, Illinois

Funding: Work supported by U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, under Contract No. W-31-109-ENG-38.

Conventional pi-mode rf photoinjectors typically use magnetic solenoids for emittance compensation. This provides independent focusing strength, but can complicate rf power feed placement, introduce asymmetries (due to coil crossovers), and greatly increase the cost of the photoinjector. Cathode-region focusing can also provide for a form of emittance compensation. Typically this method strongly couples focusing strength to the field gradient on the cathode, however, and also requires altering the longitudinal position of the cathode to change the focusing. We propose a new method for achieving cathode-region variable-strength focusing for emittance compensation. The new method reduces the coupling to the gradient on the cathode, and does not require a change in the longitudinal position of the cathode. Expected performance for an S-band system is similar to conventional solenoid-based designs. This paper presents the results of rf cavity and beam dynamics simulations of the new design.

• M. Trovo, M.B. Danailov, G. Penco
  ELETTRA, Basovizza, Trieste
• W. Graves
  MIT, Middleton, Massachusetts
• S.M. Lidia
  LBNL, Berkeley, California

In the framework of the FERMI@ELETTRA project, aimed to build an X-ray FEL source, a crucial role is played by the electron source, which has to produce a very high quality bunch, in terms of low emittance and uncorrelated energy spread. We have investigated the effects of low- (100-300 5m) and high- ( 10^-50 5m) frequency modulation of the beam charge deriving from intensity modulation of the laser pulse incident on the photocathode on the downstream beam distribution. Following other proposals, we have investigated the use of a short laser 'heater' to increase the effective incoherent energy spread and reduce the gain in the longitudinal density modulation instability. We present results from simulation of the beam generation at the photocathode, and transport through the photoinjector, initial acceleration modules and the laser heater.

• G. Penco, M. Trovo
  ELETTRA, Basovizza, Trieste
• S.M. Lidia
  LBNL, Berkeley, California

In the framework of the FERMI@ELETTRA project, aimed to build an x-ray FEL source based on laser-seeded harmonic generation, a crucial role is played by the electron source, which has to produce a very high quality beam, in terms of low emittance and uncorrelated energy spread. A very attractive solution is the SLAC/BNL/UCLA 1.6 cell s-band gun III based upon the demonstrated high performance of this design and its descendants. This paper describes the results of the optimization studies based on the gun III design and carried out with two space charge tracking codes (GPT and ASTRA) for nominal operating parameters. In particular two different bunch charge regimes has been explored: low (few hundreds of pC) and high (~1nC) . In the first case, the limited charge extracted from the photo-cathode allows to propagate a bunch with an initial higher density and to compress it along the linac down to a few hundreds of fs, attaining a high peak current bunch with a very low slice emittance. The second case has been investigated in order to verify the possibility to produce a "1 ps plateau" bunch with acceptable peak current and a slice emittance lower than 2 mm mrad. We present simulation results for both cases.

• J.R. Harris
  University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland
• J.G. Neumann
  IREAP, College Park, Maryland
• P.G. O'Shea
  University Maryland, College Park, Maryland

Funding: Department of Energy, Office of Naval Research, Army Research Laboratory, and Directed Energy Professional Society

All beams are dominated by space charge forces when first created. After a beam is accelerated, space charge directly plays a less important role. However, at low energy space charge will drive changes in the beam which will become "frozen in" as the beam is accelerated, and may have adverse consequences even at high energy. In this paper, we report on the generation and evolution of modulated beams in the University of Maryland Electron Ring, a low energy (10 keV), high current (100 mA) electron recirculator for the study of beams in the extreme space charge dominated regime. Such intense, modulated beams have application to future high power FELs and novel light sources.

• D. Kayran, V. Litvinenko
  BNL, Upton, Long Island, New York

Funding: Work performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy

Energy recovery linacs (ERLs) are potential candidates for the high power and high brightness electron beams sources. The main advantages of ERL are that electron beam is generated at relatively low energy, injected and accelerated to the operational energy in a linac, and after the use is decelerated in the same linac down to injection energy, and, finally, dumped. A merging system, i.e. a system merging together high energy and low energy beams, is an intrinsic part of any ERL loop. One of the challenges for generating high charge, high brightness electron beams in an ERL is development of a merging system, which provides achromatic condition for space charge dominated beam and which is compatible with the emittance compensation scheme. In this paper we present the theory, the principles of operation and some designs (including simulations) of such merging systems. We use a specific implementation for R&D ERL at Brookhaven as the illustration.

• C.J. Bocchetta, D. Bulfone, P. Craievich, G. D'Auria, M.B. Danailov, G. De Ninno, S. Di Mitri, B. Diviacco, M. Ferianis, A. Gomezel, F. Iazzourene, E. Karantzoulis, G. Penco, M. Trovo
  ELETTRA, Basovizza, Trieste
• J.N. Corlett, W.M. Fawley, S.M. Lidia, G. Penn, A. Ratti, J.W.  Staples, R.B. Wilcox, A. Zholents
  LBNL, Berkeley, California
• M. Cornacchia, P. Emma, Z. Huang, J. Wu
  SLAC, Menlo Park, California
• W. Graves, F.O. Ilday, F.X. Kaertner, D. Wang, T. Zwart
  MIT, Middleton, Massachusetts
• F. Parmigiani
  Universita Cattolica-Brescia, Brescia

We describe the machine layout and major performance parameters for the FERMI FEL project funded for construction at Sincrotrone Trieste, Italy. The project will be the first user facility based on seeded harmonic cascade FELs, providing controlled, high peak-power pulses. With a high-brightness rf photocathode gun, and using the existing 1.2 GeV S-band linac, the facility will provide tunable output over a range from ~100 nm to ~10 nm, with pulse duration from 40 fs to ~ 1ps, and with fully variable output polarization. Initially, two FEL cascades are planned; a single-stage harmonic generation to operate > 40 nm, and a two-stage cascade operating from ~40 nm to ~10 nm or shorter wavelength. The output is spatially and temporally coherent, with peak power in the GW range. Lasers provide modulation to the electron beam, as well as driving the photocathode and other systems, and the facility will integrate laser systems with the accelerator infrastructure, including a state-of-the-art optical timing system providing synchronization of rf signals, lasers, and x-ray pulses. Major systems and overall facility layout are described, and key performance parameters summarized.