The Wisconsin VUV/soft xray free election laser

The University of Wisconsin-Madison and its partners are developing a design for a free electron laser (FEL) facility operating in the VUV to soft X-ray range that will be proposed as a new multidisciplinary user facility. Key features of this facility include seeded, fully coherent output with tunable photon energy and polarization over the range 5-900 eV, and simultaneous, independent operation of multiple beamlines. The different beamlines will support a wide range of science from femto-chemistry requiring ultrashort pulses with kHz repetition rates to photoemission spectroscopy requiring high average flux and narrow bandwidth at MHz rates. The facility will take advantage of the flexibility, stability, and high average pulse rates available from a CW superconducting linac fed by a photoinjector. This unique facility is expected to enable new science through ultrahigh resolution in the time and frequency domains, as well as coherent imaging and nano-fabrication. This project is being developed through collaboration between the UW Synchrotron Radiation Center and MIT. We present an overview of the facility, including the motivating science, and its laser, accelerator, and experimental systems.