FERMI, the seeded Free Electron Laser (FEL) located
at the Elettra laboratory in Trieste, Italy, welcomed in
December 2012 the first external users on the FEL-1 line.
This line is based on a single stage of High Gain
Harmonic Generation (HGHG), seeded by a UV laser,
and covers wavelengths between 80 and 20 nm. The
photon energy reached more than 300 J. The second
FEL line, FEL-2, covering the lower wavelength range
between 20 and 4 nm thanks to a double stage cascaded
HGHG scheme, has generated its first coherent photons in
October 2012. The latter is the first experimental
demonstration of a seeded free electron laser configured
as a two-stage cascade operating in the "fresh bunch
injection” mode, where the second stage is seeded by the
light produced by the first stage. This paper describes the
status of the operation and user experiments with FEL-1
and reports about the progress in the commissioning of
FEL-2.
