• J.W. Baehr
  DESY, Hamburg
• K. Abrahamyan
  YerPhI, Yerevan
• G. Asova, G. Dimitrov
  INRNE, Sofia
• V. Boccone
  Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Berlin
• H.-J. Grabosch, J.H. Han, S. Khodyachykh, G. Klemz, M. Krasilnikov, S. Liu, H.L. Luedecke, V. Miltchev, A. Oppelt, B. Petrosyan, S. Riemann, L. Staykov, F. Stephan, M. Winde, O. kalekin
  DESY Zeuthen, Zeuthen
• M.V. Hartrott, R. Richter
  BESSY GmbH, Berlin
• J.R. Roensch
  Uni HH, Hamburg
• I. Will
  MBI, Berlin

Funding: This work has partly been supported by the European Community, contract numbers RII3-CT-2004-506008 and 011935, an by the "Impunls-und Vernetzungsfonds" of the Helmholtz Association, contract number VH-FZ-05

In spring of 2005 an essential upgrade of the photocathode laser and of the 27 m long laser beam-line took place at PITZ. A detectable improvement of the laser beam profile at the photocathode is expected. This improvement should lead to an additional reduction of the transverse emittance of the electron beam. The upgraded laser consists of a fully laser diode pumped scheme of pulse train oscillator, pre-amplifiers and booster amplifiers. The main advantages of this upgrade are improved stability, easier maintenance and long-term operations at 10 Hz repetition rate. In addition, the scheme of the optical beam-line was changed: The distance between the beam shaping aperture and the cathode was strongly reduced. Therefore a further improvement of the laser beam profile at the photocathode is expected. The laser beam-line is upgraded by an enlarged number of remotely controlled optical elements that allows the fine tuning of the laser beam characteristics during the running. New diagnostics tools are included in the laser beam-line. The paper focuses on the design of the new optical beam-line. It describes the results of electron beam measurements using the upgraded laser and the new PITZ2 electron beam-line in detail.