Free Electron Laser Commissioning Meeting

Friday, 17 Apr 98
Recorder: C. Bohn

Next Meeting


Date: 24 Apr 98
Time: "0845"-0945
Place: FEL Facility Break Room

Agenda for Next Meeting


Item Person Responsible Time ---- ------------------ -------- Status of Open Action Items All 5 min Scheduling and Commissioning Program Bohn/All 50 min New Issues All 5 min

This Week's Attendees


J. Bennett, S. Benson, G. Biallas, C. Bohn, D. Douglas, M. Drury, F. Dylla, J. Fugitt, L. Harwood, A. Hofler, K. Jordan, R. Lauze, R. Li, G. Neil, D. Oepts, M. Shinn

Closed Action Items


Items of Discussion


This week we ran up to 1.2 mA beam at 38 MeV energy to the straight-ahead dump. The machine configuration presently allows us to turn on and "immediately" run current in the range 0.6-0.7 mA. It remains to do some "fine tuning" of the electron beam to do better. We will be working on it. Our immediate commissioning goals continue to be (1) find and fix what doesn't work, (2) achieve stable 1.1 mA, 38 MeV beam of sufficiently good beam quality at the wiggler, and (3) achieve a reproducible machine setup that can be restored (turned on) quickly.

We need stability on a time scale commensurate with the cathode lifetime, and we have been gathering data to determine it. Midweek we did two sustained cw runs that indicated the cathode e-folding time was in the range 13-17 hours, but this was after using it since 27 Mar 98. We recesiated the cathode yesterday and will be gathering more data. What we have seen thus far is favorable. If the period between recesiation were to be 24 hours (3 shifts), that would be favorable both for commissioning and for users.

Regarding diagnostics, this week we commissioned the two M_56 cavities that will provide information about longitudinal phase space, we calibrated and now continuously use the current-monitor cavity in conjunction with the picoammeters at the beam dumps, and we debugged the hardware for the second multislit transverse-emittance monitor. We also set up the energy-recovery dump and put tune-up beam into it in preparation for doing a "zero-phasing" measurement of the bunch length coming out of the cryomodule. We will attempt to get a data point tonight.

In summary, people have continued to work very hard, and the successes over the last two weeks (going from ľA to mA beam in that short time!) reflect their efforts. We are continuing along the lines outlined above.

Next week we begin to have only one FEL'er (with another FEL'er on standby in case of emergency) and one CEBAF operator assigned to each shift. Assignments for the next two weeks are:

20-24 April 1998:
Owl -- Jordan, CEBAF operator, Piot on standby
Day -- Yunn, CEBAF operator, Li on standby
Swing -- Neil, CEBAF operator, Oepts on standby
20-24 April 1998:
Owl -- Oepts, CEBAF operator, Shu on standby
Day -- Li, CEBAF operator, Douglas on standby
Swing -- Benson, CEBAF operator, Krafft on standby

C. Bohn led a discussion concerning the status of prerequisites to inserting the wiggler and trying to get first light. As delineated in last week's minutes, the prerequisites, and their status, are:

1. Support of CEBAF operators. Start using them NOW!
Status: Going well; will increase starting Monday. We still need to start an "Operator Limits" log.
2. Stable 1.1 mA, 38 MeV beam with sufficiently good beam quality.
Status: Current and energy achieved; stability and quick turn-on need work. As a start, we need to stabilize the Conoptics 305 that gates the drive laser's electro-optic cells. We need to improve the injector settings and monitor their stability. G. Biallas presented an outline of his cursory thoughts for doing so. The topic was discussed in detail today in a follow-on meeting, and appropriate procedures and test plans for initial efforts will be available shortly. S. Benson pointed out that for a confident attempt at first light the normalized rms transverse and longitudinal emittances at the wiggler need to be better than about 9 mm-mrad (not "<20 mm- mrad") and 35 keV-deg, respectively, with 60 pC bunches. PARMELA predicts 5 mm-mrad and 10 keV-deg, so there is significant margin.
3. Good (>10 hr) cathode lifetime.
Status: Preliminary indications are favorable.
4. Working diagnostics.

5. Adequate injector setup.
Status: Initial procedures and test plans to ascertain cryounit cavity alignment and to monitor stability of injector settings have been identified and are forthcoming.
6. Working Analog Monitoring System.
Status: Not yet available. We have made temporary provisions pending AMS completion.
7. Detailed procedures and test plans well communicated to MCC staff.
Status: This will be ongoing.
8. Working optical transport, including Laser Safety System for the Optical Control Room.
Status: Largely, but not fully, complete.
9. Great teamwork with some individual sacrifice.
Status: Done!!!
An additional entry is:
10. Radiation monitor at wiggler location (to protect wiggler).
Status: In work. Could conceivably be finished by 1 May 98.

New Issues


None.

New Action Items


Old Action Items


Procedures in Work


Emittance Growth from CSR

Thread Beam around Machine, Top-Level           Douglas, finalize 6 Mar 98
RF Stability during Energy Recovery             Merminga, 6 Mar 98
MPS/BLM Checkout for First Light                Mahoney, 8 Apr 98