The Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) project at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), which passed the US Department of Energy’s “Critical Decision 1” process in October 2002, has been allocated $6 million (€5.5 million) in the budget for fiscal year 2003 to start engineering design activities. The project is a proposed multi-institutional collaboration for an X-ray free-electron laser (XFEL) using electron beams from the SLAC linac, and operating in the 0.15-1.5 nm wavelength region.
The XFEL will receive a beam of electrons accelerated through the final third of the SLAC linac. The electron beam will then make a single pass through a 122 m undulator, to generate a laser-like X-ray beam 10 billion times brighter than the light currently produced at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory. The design and construction cost for the LCLS project is estimated at around $220 million, and the construction schedule calls for full operation by September 2008.
In Europe meanwhile, the German Science Council has recommended DESY’s TESLA project as worthy of support, in a report that assessed nine large-scale facilities for basic research in the natural sciences. In a previous evaluation statement, the Science Council had asked for further details on the superconducting electron-positron linear collider with respect to international funding and co-operation, and also for a revised technical proposal for the TESLA X-ray laser with a separate linear accelerator. DESY sent the corresponding papers to the Science Council in October.
In response to the latest report, Albrecht Wagner, chairman of the DESY Directorate, said: “We are very glad that the Science Council changed its first positive statement about TESLA to the German federal government to a recommendation, and we are looking forward to hearing the upcoming evaluations, since we have complied with the conditions posed by the Science Council.” The final decision of the federal government regarding the TESLA project is expected this year.
The Technical Design Report Supplement for the TESLA X-ray laser is now available at http://tesla.desy.de/tdr-update.
