First lasing of the IR FEL at the Fritz-Haber-Institut

An IR and THz free-electron laser for applications in, i.a., molecular and cluster spectroscopy as well as surface science has been installed at the Fritz-Haber-Institut in Berlin. Commissioning has started at the end of July 2011. On February 14th ‘first lasing’ was observed at a wavelength of about 18 µm.
The normal-conducting electron linac together with a gun-to-dump electron beam line has been designed, fabricated, and installed by Advanced Energy Systems, Inc. It comprises two S-band (2.99 GHz) standing-wave copper structures. The first one is designed to accelerate the electron bunches to a fixed energy of 20 MeV, while the second one shall accelerate or decelerate the electrons to any final energy between 15 and 50 MeV. Electron bunches of up to 300 pC charge are accelerated at a maximum rate of 1 GHz. A chicane between the two structures allows for variable bunch-compression down to 1 ps. Further, the design length of the electron macro-pulses is as long as 15 µs with a maximum repetition rate of 20 Hz.
The electrons will, eventually, be steered through either one of two oscillator FELs, So far, the first FEL has been installed. It includes a 2-m-long planar hybrid-magnet undulator made by STI Optronics, Inc. with a period of 40 mm, which is enclosed within a 5.4 m long IR cavity. At a minimum gap of 16.5 mm a maximum undulator parameter of more than 1.6 is reached. As a result, it is expected that MIR radiation in the range from 4 µm up to almost 50 µm can be produced with this system. Hole-outcoupling is used to extract a beam from the IR cavity. The cavity length will be stabilized using the feedback signal from a HeNe-laser interferometer.
The design of the FIR FEL, so far, has been outlined. It shall employ a 7.2 m long cavity containing a full-length 1-dimensional waveguide and a more than 4 m long undulator with a period of 11 cm. The design wavelength range covers the FIR from about 30 µm all the way to the THz regime up to about 500 µm. We will present the status of commissioning and design of the MIR and FIR FEL, respectively.