FERMI Seeded FEL Progress Report

FERMI, the seeded Free Electron Laser (FEL) located at the Elettra laboratory in Trieste, Italy, welcomed in December 2012 the first external users on the FEL-1 line. This line is based on a single stage of High Gain Harmonic Generation (HGHG), seeded by a UV laser, and covers wavelengths between 80 and 20 nm. The photon energy reached more than 300 J. The second FEL line, FEL-2, covering the lower wavelength range between 20 and 4 nm thanks to a double stage cascaded HGHG scheme, has generated its first coherent photons in October 2012. The latter is the first experimental demonstration of a seeded free electron laser configured as a two-stage cascade operating in the "fresh bunch injection” mode, where the second stage is seeded by the light produced by the first stage. This paper describes the status of the operation and user experiments with FEL-1 and reports about the progress in the commissioning of FEL-2.