SLAC, Menlo Park, California, USA
The LCLS-II FEL is under construction at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. This facility is based on a superconducting accelerator, providing a cw e- beam of 4 GeV at ~1 MHz. This beam drives two variable gap undulator (VGU) beam lines to generate photons in the soft and hard X-ray regime. High repetition rate photon beams will be available up to ~5 keV. The normal conducting accelerator will remain in operation, delivering milli-joule pulses up to ~20 keV for LCLS science. We anticipate to start the LCLS user program in the spring of 2020 using the new undulator systems. Superconducting accelerator operation will start in 2021 and will achieve full design-performance over the course of several years. Approximately a quarter of the superconducting accelerator is installed now and the associated cryoplant construction is near completion. The VGU systems will be installed and ready for beam delivery in early 2020. We will report on the project status, commissioning and ramp-up plans to achieve design performance and discuss plans to take advantage of the new facilities potential including our longer term strategy to extend the capability of SLAC’s LCLS FEL facility.
