• G. De Ninno
  University of Nova Gorica, Nova Gorica
• E. Allaria, M. Cornacchia, G. De Ninno, S. Di Mitri, B. Diviacco, G. Penco, C. Spezzani, M. Trovò
  ELETTRA, Basovizza

The commissioning of the first stage of FERMI@Elettra will start during the summer 2009. During the first year of operation, efforts will concentrate on the optimization of the gun performance, as well as of the electron-beam acceleration and transport through the LINAC. By fall 2010, it is our aim to generate out of the LINAC an electron beam as similar as possible to the one needed for obtaining the nominal (i.e., user-required) FEL performance [see, e.g., S. Di Mitri et al., this Conference]. Such a beam will be then injected into the undulator chain and used to get the first FEL light. In this paper, we present our strategy for the commissioning of the FEL process, both in SASE and seeded configurations. On the basis of start-to-end simulations, we also discuss the expected FEL performance for day-one operation.