I will give an overview of the project that will be the primary focus of the Stockholm-Uppsala FEL centre (SUFEL) in the near future, the development towards a Soft X-ray Laser (SXL) beamline at the MAX IV facility. The SXL will make use of the existing linac, which is designed to provide electron bunches with a maximum energy of 3 GeV to the storage rings and the Short Pulse Facility of MAX IV. Since a X-ray FEL has been part of the MAX IV long-term plan from the beginning, the linac is also prepared to deliver appropriate electron bunches for the SXL, which will permit the creation of intense, ultrashort and coherent soft X-ray pulses. Thus, there is an extraordinary opportunity to build an advanced soft X-ray laser beamline at MAX IV that would only require a modest investment of the order a few hundred million SEK.
Initially the SXL will operate in SASE mode but several upgrades are foreseen in a second stage, such as external seeding, attosecond pulse generation and possibly a THz FEL. Thus, I will also discuss two SUFEL projects of relevance for such SXL upgrades, the previous development of a THz FEL and the recently started activities towards the formation of attosecond pulses.
