SLAC, Menlo Park, California, USA
SLAC is a home of the first hard x-ray free electron laser - the Linac Coherent Light Source, or LCLS, based on Self-Amplified Stimulated Emission (SASE) principle. Being a user facility, LCLS, as well as some other installations at SLAC, are, at the same time, test beds of research aimed to improving fundamental characteristics of free electron lasers. In this presentation I will review results of some of these studies. They include studies of the FEL seeding based on the Echo-Enabled Harmonic Generation (EEGH) carried out at the NLCTA facility at SLAC, hard x-ray self seeding at LCLS, noise suppression experiments, and research aimed to achieve terawatt-scale power in FELs. A brief review of the plans for LCLS upgrade will be given.
