The electron scattering facility at the Saclay 600 MeV linear accelerator

An experimental set-up consisting of two high performance spectrometers is operating at the Saclay 600 MeV Linear Accelerator for electron scattering experiments with or without the detection of an emitted charged particle in coincidence. We give here the essential facts about the spectrometers, and the detection systems composed of multiwire proportional chambers and scintillation and Cerenkov counters. Very good rejection of background makes it possible to measure cross-sections as low as 10-4 nb sr-1 with 2.5 x 10-4 energy resolution in (e,e') experiments. For coincidence (e,e'p) measurements at 500 MeV incident electron energy, the lowest cross-section measured is 5 x 10-3 nb MeV-2 sr-2, and the missing energy resolution is 0.8 MeV. (orig.)