Electro Optic Bunch Length Measurements at the VUV-FEL at DESY

For the operation of a SASE FEL, the longitudinal bunch profile is one of the most critical parameters. At the superconducting linac of the VUV-FEL at DESY, an electro optic sampling (EOS) experiment was installed to probe the time structure of the electric field of the bunches to better than 100 fs rms. The field induced birefringence of a ZnTe crystal is detected by a femtosecond laser pulse (TiSa) and the time structure is measured by scanning the relative timing of the electron bunch and the TiSa pulse. A synchronization stability of better than 70 fs between laser and accelerator RF has been achieved. First results on the synchronization and the bunch profile measurements are presented.