Infrared Radiation and Bremsstrahlung at ELBE

The radiation source ELBE (Electron Linac of high Brilliance and low Emittance) at Forschungszentrum Dresden-Rossendorf is based on a superconducting linac that produces a high power continuous wave (cw) electron beam up to 40 MeV and 1 mA. Electron beams with variable bunch charges up to 80 pC and variable repetition rates up to 260 MHz are produced using a pulsed thermionic DC gun followed by a two-stage RF bunching system. Two cryomodules each containing two 9-cell RF-cavities (1.3 GHz) accelerate the electrons to about 40 MeV. The linac is used to drive two free-electron lasers producing infrared radiation from 3 to 200 microns wavelength. Additionally, from several conversion targets, MeV-bremsstrahlung (< 20 MeV) and X-rays (10-100 keV) from electron channelling are generated. Presently facilities for neutron and positron beams are commissioned at ELBE. The superconducting RF accelerator technology used, details of the machine instrumentation and several kinds of electron beam diagnosis will be described. In particular the generation of Infrared radiation and Bremsstrahlung and some examples of their applications will be discussed.