SwissFEL Control System - Overview, Status, and Lessons Learned

The SwissFEL is a new free electron laser facility at the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) in Switzerland. Commissioning started in 2016 and resulted in first lasing in December 2016 (albeit not on the design energy). In 2017, the commissioning continued and will result in the first pilot experiments at the end of the year. The close interaction of experiment and accelerator components as well as the pulsed electron beam required a well thought out integration of the control system including some new concepts and layouts. This paper presents the current status of the control system together with some lessons learned.
Proceedings of the 16th Int. Conf. on Accelerator and Large Experimental Control Systems, ICALEPCS2017, Barcelona, Spain