COMMISSIONING OF THE SPARC PHOTO-INJECTOR∗

The SPARC project [1] is born to perform R&D activity headed to realize SASE-FEL experiments at 500nm and higher harmonic generation. The project foresees the real-ization of a high brightness photo-injector able to produce a 150 ÷ 200MeV electron beam to drive FEL process inside a dedicated 12m long undulator. The machine is going to be assembled at LNF and its final configuration is made up of an RF gun, driven by a Ti:Sa laser, injecting into three SLAC type accelerating sections. Nowadays we are work-ing in a photo-injector test phase, aiming to characterize the main hardware components and to investigate the behavior of the e-beam dynamics in the first meters of drift. To do this we utilize the emittance-meter, a home designed diag-nostic device placed just after the RF gun, able to move 1.2 meters along the longitudinal axis to measure beam param-eters. In this paper we report a more accurate description of the project, the status of the single systems constituting the machine and the most important results we obtained in the e-meter phase