Status and future plans for the SRF gun at ELBE

At the ELBE radiation facility a superconducting RF photo injector has been developed and operated during the last years. The gun has a 3 ½ cell niobium cavity for 1.3 GHz and uses normal-conducting photo cathodes. Since 2010 the electron beam of the gun has been injected into the ELBE linac. In 2011 beam was delivered for the first sophisticated experiment producing x-rays by Compton backscattering of photons of the high-power laser DRACO. The successful operation of the SRF gun confirms the general design with an elliptical cavity, superconducting RF choke filter, and normal-conducting photocathodes as well as the proper design of most of the subsystems like couplers and tuners. At present, the main draw-back is the low acceleration gradient of the cavity. Therefore two new cavities have been designed, built and tested in collaboration with Jlab. This work is in its final stage now, and we expect assembly of the new cavity in an improved cryomodule and its installation at ELBE for 2012.