An important milestone for the realization of the new SwissFEL facility was reached on the 24th of August 2010, when the core of the new SwissFEL facility was set into operation at the Paul Scherrer Institute. Guest of Honour, Bundesrat Didier Burkhalter pressed the red button, and the SwissFEL Injector Test Facility produced its first electron beam. For more information see news from PSI .

At the 32nd International Free Electron Laser Conference in Malmö, Sweden, the EuroFEL consortium has been presented by Josef Feldhaus, scientific coordinator of the projects preparatory phase. Josef Feldhaus reported about the progress of the several national FEL projects and the current status of EuroFEL.

A meeting of the WP3 Expert Group “Metrology for FEL-Optics” is scheduled for 25-26 November 2010 at the Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI). The meeting will be held in conjunction with members of the WP3 Expert Group “Photon Beam Transport and Diagnostics” and WP7. Other interested scientists of the EuroFEL Consortium are very welcome to join the meeting.

End of June, about 85 scientist from 33 current and future FEL labs and industrial participants met at DESY in Hamburg for the first “EuroFEL Workshop on Photon Beamlines and Diagnostics” which was organised by the workpackages 3 & 7 of the IRUVX-PP project. The aim was to discuss new ideas which arise in the different laboratories, and to start joining the efforts for developing diagnostic systems and metrology.

The spectrum of the record laser pulse peaks at a wavelength of 4.45 nanometres. For the first time, FLASH produced laser light with a wavelength of 4.45 nanometres; thus, DESY’s Free Electron Laser for soft X-ray light considerably beat its previous record of 6.5 nanometres. At the same time, the peak intensity of single light pulses nearly doubled, with 0.3 millijoule.

A IRUVX-PP SC meeting was held at DESY in Hamburg on 17 June 2010 to concretise the planning for the 3rd project year. The meeting topics were: reports from the workpackages and deliverables for the 3rd year, internal regulations for the future activity boards, internal regulations for the future EuroFEL activity boards and plannings for the transition phase to the EuroFEL consortium. Furthermore a concept to reach new users has been presented and discussed. The next SC meeting will take place on 4 November.

The SPARC test facility provides a new and exciting opportunity to study Free Electron Laser (FEL) dynamics in exotic configurations. The undulator is based on six variable gap modules which may be tuned combining the higher order resonances to realize Free Electron Laser cascades or harmonic cascades