FACILITY UPGRADE AT PITZ AND FIRST OPERATION RESULTS

The Photo Injector Test facility at DESY, Zeuthen site (PITZ), develops, optimizes and characterizes high brightness electron sources for free electron lasers like FLASH and the European XFEL. In the last year, the PITZ facility was significantly upgraded by the installation of a new normal conducting radio-frequency (RF) gun cavity with its new waveguide system for the RF feed, which should allow stable and reliable gun operation, as required for the European XFEL. Other relevant additions include beamline modifications for improving the electron beam transport through the PITZ accelerator and preparing the installation of a plasma cell. Furthermore, the laser hutch was re-arranged in order to house an additional, new photo cathode drive laser system which will produce 3D ellipsoidal laser pulses to further improve the electron beam quality. This paper describes the facility upgrades and reports on the first operation experience with the new gun setup.