Recent results and future perspectives of the SPARC project

The SPARC project foresees the realization of a high brightness photo-injector to produce a 150-200 MeV electron beam to drive 500 nm FEL experiments in various configurations, a Thomson backscattering source and a plasma accelerator experiment (these last two ones jointly with the project PLASMONX). The SPARC photoinjector is also the test facility for the recently approved VUV FEL project named SPARX. As a first stage of the commissioning, a complete characterization of the photoinjector has been accomplished with a detailed study of the emittance compensation process downstream the gun-solenoid system: this lead to the first direct experimental demonstration of emittance oscillations in a drift. The second stage of the commissioning, that is currently underway, foresees a detailed analysis of the beam matching with the linac in order to confirm the theoretically prediction of emittance compensation based on the “invariant envelope” matching and the demonstration of the “velocity bunching” technique in the linac. SASE and SEEDING experiments are foreseen by the end of the current year. In this paper we report the experimental results obtained so far and the scientific program for the near future