Swiss Light Source (SLS) at the Paul Scherrer Institute is an advanced third generation high brightness source based on a 2.4 GeV electron storage ring. Characterised by high stability and reproducibility of its electron beam, it is being used to investigate the physics of very small vertical emittance electron beams – of interest not only for the next generation storage rings based light sources like MAX IV in Sweden, but also for the future linear colliders (damping rings) and high luminosity meson factories (SuperKEKB in Japan and SuperB in Italy).
SwissFEL is the future X-Ray project at the Paul Scherrer Institute. It will deliver intense short pulses of light down to 1 Angstrom wavelength. The use of very low emittance electron gun and of short period undulators provides the basis for this rather compact Free Elelctron Laser based on a 6 GeV electron linear accelerator. A 250 MeV injector has recently been built and will be used to study innovative seeding techniques. This facility is poised to extend the ultra-fast laser based techniques into the hard X-rays wavelength range.