Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

We discuss the design and current status of a compact free-electron laser (FEL), generating ultra-fast, high-peak flux, VUV pulses driven by a high-current, GeV electron beam from the existing Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) laser-plasma accelerator, whose active acceleration length is only a few cm. The proposed ultra-fast source would be intrinsically temporally synchronized to the drive laser pulse, enabling pump-probe studies in ultra-fast science with pulse lengths of tens of fs. Owing to the high current (& 10 kA) of the laser-plasma-accelerated electron beams, saturated output fluxes are potentially greater than 1013 photons/pulse. Devices based both on SASE and high-harmonic generated input seeds, to reduce undulator length and fluctuations, are considered.