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Part of the future polarization program performed at the Bonn accelerator facility ELSA will rely on precision Compton polarimetry of the stored transversely polarized electron beam. Precise and fast polarimetry poses high demands on the light source and the detector which were studied in detail performing numerical simulations of the Compton scattering process. In order to experimentally verify these calculations, first measurements were carried out using an argon ion laser as light source and a prototype version of a counting silicon microstrip detector. Calculated and measured intensity profiles of backscattered photons are presented and compared, showing excellent agreement. Background originating from beam gas radiation turned out to be the major limitation of the polarimeter performance. In order to improve the situation, a new polarimeter was constructed and is currently being set up. Design and expected performance of this polarimeter upgrade are presented.

Since 2000, an inverted source for polarized electrons is in operation at the electron stretcher accelerator ELSA of Bonn university. Within several years of operation for the GDH experiment, the gun provided a pulsed beam with high polarization and intensity using a single strained‐layer superlattice photocathode. The generation of rectangularly shaped pulses with 100 nC charge is achieved by optical pumping with a flashlamp‐pumped titanium sapphire laser and space charge limited emission at 50 keV. Continuous degradation of the photocathode due to oxygen deposition on the surface which could not be removed completely by heat cleaning at moderate temperatures had been observed. In order to enhance the reliability and uptime of the source, a new load‐lock system with crystal storage and atomic hydrogen cleaning will be installed in the near future.

At the electron stretcher accelerator ELSA in Bonn a pulsed 50 kV inverted gun of polarized electrons has been in operation since February 2000. A strained‐layer superlattice crystal is used to deliver a beam with a polarization of about 80 %. A flashlamp‐pumped Ti‐Sapphire laser with a pulse repetition rate of 50 Hz serves as source of light. The gun is operated in space charge limitation. The current can be chosen by varying the distance between cathode and anode. With 1 μs pulses of 100 mA the source was particularly used together with a polarized target for a GDH sum rule experiment. The high photocathode lifetime allows continuous operation at 100 mA typically for periods of about two weeks without maintenance. So far no change of the crystal was necessary.

The future medium energy physics program at the electron stretcher accelerator ELSA of Bonn University mainly relies on experiments using polarized electrons in the energy range from 1 to 3.2 GeV. To provide a polarized beam with high polarization and sufficient intensity a dedicated source has been developed and set into operation. To prevent depolarization during acceleration in the circular accelerators several depolarizing resonances have to be corrected for. Intrinsic resonances are compensated using two pulsed betatron tune jump quadrupoles. The influence of imperfection resonances is successfully reduced applying a dynamic closed orbit correction in combination with an empirical harmonic correction on the energy ramp. In order to minimize beam depolarization, both types of resonances and the correction techniques have been studied in detail. It turned out that the polarization in ELSA can be conserved up to 2.5 GeV and partially up to 3.2 GeV which is demonstrated by measurements using a Moller polarimeter installed in the external GDH1-beamline.

The future medium energy physics program at the electron stretcher accelerator ELSA of Bonn University mainly relies on experiments requiring a beam of polarized electrons and a polarized target. To provide a polarized beam with high polarization and sufficient intensity a pulsed 50 kV inverted gun of polarized electrons has been set into operation. The gun is operated in space charge limitation, producing a peak current of 100 mA in rectangular 1μs long electron pulses. Photocathode lifetime during operation is higher than 3000 hours. Using a Be-InGaAs/Be-AlGaAs superlattice photocathode a polarization of 80% and a corresponding quantum efficiency of 0.4% could be obtained.