SwissFEL First Free Electrons, First Beam at 144 MeV and First acceleration with SwissFEL C-band modules

From the end of August to mid of September 2016 a couple of important milestones were reached for SwissFEL. On the 24th of August 2016 the first free electrons were produced and accelerated to 7.9 MeV. On the 8th of September the first electrons were transported and accelerated in the SwissFEL injector beamline. At an estimated final beam energy of 144 MeV the shift crew managed to propagate the beam up to the injector beamdump at a distance of 120 m from the electron source. On the next day the 9th of September electrons were accelerated with a SwissFEL C-band module (the first one of a series of 26 modules) for the first time. This is a great success and means that the first milestones for the SwissFEL beam commissioning were reached!