The SwissFEL X-ray Free Electron Laser (XFEL) facility started construction at the Paul Scherrer Institute (Villigen, Switzerland) in 2013 and will be ready to accept its first users in 2018 on the Aramis hard X-ray branch. In the following sections we will summarize the various aspects of the project, including the design of the soft and hard X-ray branches of the accelerator, the results of SwissFEL performance simulations, details of the photon beamlines and experimental stations, and our first commissioning results.

Single-spin asymmetries have been measured for semi-inclusive electroproduction of pi(+), pi(-), pi(0) and K+ mesons in deep-inelastic scattering off a longitudinally polarised deuterium target. The asymmetries appear in the distribution of the hadrons in the azimuthal angle phi around the virtual photon direction, relative to the lepton scattering plane. The corresponding analysing powers in the sinphi moment of the cross section are 0.012 +/- 0.002(stat.) +/- 0.002(syst.) for pi(+), 0.006 +/- 0.003(stat.) +/- 0.002(syst.) for pi(-), 0.021 +/- 0.005(stat.) +/- 0.003(syst.) for pi(0) and 0.013 +/- 0.006(stat.) +/- 0.003(syst.) for K The sin 20 moments are compatible with zero for all particles. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science B.V All rights reserved

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Exclusive coherent and incoherent electroproduction of the rho(0) meson from 1H and 14N targets has been studied at the HERMES experiment as a function of coherence length (l(c)), corresponding to the lifetime of hadronic fluctuations of the virtual photon, and squared four-momentum of the virtual photon (-Q2). The ratio of 14N to 1H cross sections per nucleon, called nuclear transparency, was found to increase (decrease) with increasing l(c) for coherent (incoherent) rho(0) electroproduction. For fixed l(c), a rise of nuclear transparency with Q2 is observed for both coherent and incoherent rho(0) production, which is in agreement with theoretical calculations of color transparency.

SPARC (acronym of ‘‘Sorgente Pulsata ed Amplificata di Radiazione Coerente’’, i.e. Pulsed and\ud Amplified Source of Coherent Radiation) is a single pass free-electron laser designed to obtain high gain\ud amplification at a radiation wavelength of 500 nm. Self-amplified spontaneous emission has been\ud observed driving the amplifier with the high-brightness beam of the SPARC linac. We report measurements\ud of energy, spectra, and exponential gain. Experimental results are compared with simulations from\ud several numerical codes