The New Light Sources unit was set-up to study and develop new light sources, particularly those based on free-electron lasers (FELs). The main current activites are:
The FEL project on the ELETTRA storage ring began in May 1998 as a European collaboration, with partial funding from the European Commission. First lasing was achieved at a wavelength of 350 nm in February 2000, followed by 220 nm in May. In February 2001 190 nm was achieved, currently the lowest wavelength of any FEL oscillator. Further details of this first phase of development can be found here.
A second phase of development (EUFELE) has started in December 2001, aimed at further reducing the wavelength, developing experimental equipment and carrying out a pilot experimental programme. A particularly important results obtained in the last months is the succesfull operation of the FEL at increased energies of up to 1.5 GeV, the highest used so far from an FEL. Despite the reduced tunabilty of the output radiation , this allows to increase the extracted power and represents a key point for improving the compatibility with those synchrotron radiation users interested in exploiting the few-bunch filling of the storage ring for time resolved experiments.
A project to use the existing ELETTRA 1 GeV linac to drive a VUV to soft X-Ray FEL has recently been proposed to the Italian science ministry (Fondo per gli Investimenti della Ricerca di Base). The plan is to develop and install a high brightness r.f. photoinjector to replace the existing d.c. gun and make use of both seeded and self-amplified laser schemes progressing from the VUV towards X-rays.