A Front End for the CLARA FEL Test Facility at Daresbury Laboratory

The next step towards the full CLARA facility is installation of the CLARA front end to comprise a 2m Sband linac section after the photoinjector gun. This will be suitable for both the velocity bunching and standard booster modes of CLARA. An S-bend will also be installed to deflect the beam into the current VELA line, enabling delivery of higher energy beams to two existing user areas. The current photoinjector beam diagnostics section can then be used to test a High Repetition Rate electron gun currently under development. We describe the proposed CLARA front end design. We define two beam dynamics working points for CLARA, one working point for sending beam from the CLARA Front End to VELA, and one working point to feed an interim user station prior to CLARA full construction in the straighton position.