Speaker
Description
The plasma accelerator at the Shanghai Soft X-ray Free-Electron Laser facility (SXFEL) combines high-quality electron beams with an existing undulator system to investigate plasma wakefield acceleration, beam manipulation and advanced light-source applications. This talk presents the platform layout and development, with a focus on electron-beam transport and matching, laser–electron beam coupling, plasma sources and beam diagnostics. Recent progress in longitudinal phase-space manipulation using a hollow plasma channel will then be discussed, including high-gain amplification, saturated soft X-ray FEL output and spectral tuning with the manipulated electron beam. Experience from commissioning and experiments will be used to discuss beam-quality preservation, spatial and temporal alignment, operational stability and diagnostic requirements. The talk will conclude with plans for further experiments on high-quality plasma acceleration and advanced FEL operation at SXFEL.