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During the optimization phase of the FERMI Free Electron Laser (FEL) to deliver the best FEL pulses to users, many machine parameters have to be carefully tuned, like e.g. the seed laser intensity, the dispersion strength, etc. For that purpose, a new python-based acquisition tool, called REALTA (Real Time Acquisition program), has been developed to acquire various machine parameters, electron beam properties and FEL signals on a shot-by-shot basis thanks to the real time capabilities of the TANGO control system. The data are saved continuously during the acquisition in a HDF5 file. The pyDART (Python Data Analysis Real Time) program is the post-processing tool that enables a fast analysis of the data acquired with REALTA. It allows to study the correlations and dependences between the FEL and electron beam properties and the machine parameters. In this work, we present the REALTA and pyDART toolkit developed for the FERMI FEL., Proceedings of the 16th Int. Conf. on Accelerator and Large Experimental Control Systems, ICALEPCS2017, Barcelona, Spain

FERMI is a linac-driven free electron laser (FEL) based upon the High Gain Harmonic Generation (HGHG) scheme. In standard conditions a bunch of 700 pC of charge with sub mm-mrad emittances is accelerated to 1.2-1.5GeV in a normal conducting S-band linac and drives FEL-1 or FEL-2 undula-tor line, which lase respectively in the range 100-20nm or 20-4nm. A number of two-color schemes have been implemented at FERMI for pump/probe experiments, all consisting in making two portions of the same electron bunch lase at two different wavelengths, with a time-separation from 0 to few hundreds of fs. In order to increase the time separation to ns and tens of ns we have explored the acceleration of two inde-pendent electron bunches separated by multiple of the linac main radio-frequency period, i.e. 333ps. Measure-ments and characterization of this two-bunch mode oper-ation are presented, including trajectory control, impact of longitudinal and transverse wakefields on the trailing bunch and manipulation of the longitudinal phase space., Proceedings of the 8th Int. Particle Accelerator Conf., IPAC2017, Copenhagen, Denmark

COXINEL experiment aims at demonstrating free electron laser (FEL) amplification with a laser plasma accelerator (LPA). For COXINEL, a dedicated 8 m transport line has been designed and prepared at SOLEIL. We present here LPA beam transport results around 180 MeV through this line. Different electron beam optics were applied., Proceedings of the 8th Int. Particle Accelerator Conf., IPAC2017, Copenhagen, Denmark

Laser-heater systems are essential tools to control and optimize high-gain free-electron lasers (FELs) working in the x-ray wavelength range. Indeed, these systems induce a controllable increase of the energy spread of the electron bunch. The heating suppresses longitudinal microbunching instability which otherwise would limit the FEL performance. We demonstrate that, through the action of the microbunching instability, a long-wavelength modulation of the electron beam induced by the laser heater at low energy can persist until the beam entrance into the undulators. This coherent longitudinal modulation is exploited to control the FEL spectral properties, in particular, multicolor extreme-ultraviolet FEL pulses can be generated through a frequency mixing of the modulations produced by the laser heater and the seed laser in the electron beam. We present an experimental demonstration of this novel configuration carried out at the FERMI FEL., Proceedings of the 8th Int. Particle Accelerator Conf., IPAC2017, Copenhagen, Denmark

New Free-Electron Laser facilities deliver VUV and X-ray radiation with pulse length in the range of hundreds and tens of fs. A further reduction of the FEL pulse length is desired by those experiments aiming at probing ultrafast phenomena. Unlike SASE FEL, where the pulse duration is mainly driven by the electron bunch duration, in a seeded FEL the pulse duration can be determined by the seed laser properties. The use of techniques able to locally deteriorate the electron beam properties such as emittance or energy spread have been used in SASE FELs to reduce the region of the electron beam that is able to produce FEL radiation and hence reduce the FEL pulse length. The temporal shaping of the laser heater can be used to create an electron beam characterized by a very large energy spread all along the bunch except for a small region. We report measurements of the effect of the laser heater shaping on the electron beam phase-space performed at FERMI. Impact on the final FEL pulse properties are predicted with a series of numerical simulations., Proceedings of the 8th Int. Particle Accelerator Conf., IPAC2017, Copenhagen, Denmark

FERMI is the seeded Free Electron Laser (FEL) user facility at the Elettra laboratory in Trieste, operating in the ultraviolet to soft X-rays spectral range; the radiation produced by the seeded FEL is characterized by a number of desirable properties, such as wavelength stability, low temporal jitter and longitudinal coherence. In this paper, after an overview of the FEL performances, we will present the development plans under consideration for the next 3 to 5 years. These include an upgrade of the linac and of the existing FEL lines, the possibility to perform multipulse experiments in different configurations and an Echo Enabled Harmonic Generation (EEHG) experiment on FEL-2, the FEL line extending to 4 nm (310 eV)., Proceedings of the 8th Int. Particle Accelerator Conf., IPAC2017, Copenhagen, Denmark