Switchyard design for Shanghai soft X-ray free electron laser facility

In this article, a feasible switchyard design is proposed for the Shanghai soft X-ray Free Electron Laser (SXFEL) facility. In the proposed scheme, a switchyard is used to transport the electron beam to different undulator lines. Three-dimensional start-to-end simulations have been carried out to research the beam dynamic during transportation. The results show that the emittance of the electron beam increases less than 8%, meanwhile, the peak current, the energy spread and the bunch length are not spoiled as the beam passes through the switchyard. The microbunching instability of the beam and the jitter of the linear accelerator (linac) are analyzed as well.