AUTHOR=Liu Tao , Huang Nanshun , Yang Hanxiang , Qi Zheng , Zhang Kaiqing , Gao Zhangfeng , Chen Si , Feng Chao , Zhang Wei , Luo Hang , Fu Xiaoxi , Liu He , Faatz Bart , Deng Haixiao , Liu Bo , Wang Dong , Zhao Zhentang TITLE=Status and future of the soft X-ray free-electron laser beamline at the SHINE JOURNAL=Frontiers in Physics VOLUME=Volume 11 - 2023 YEAR=2023 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/physics/articles/10.3389/fphy.2023.1172368 DOI=10.3389/fphy.2023.1172368 ISSN=2296-424X ABSTRACT=The SHINE, a high repetition-rate X-ray FEL facility, is under construction in Shanghai which aims at generating X-rays between 0.4 and 25 keV with three FEL lines at repetition rate up to 1MHz. The soft X-ray FEL line, FEL-II will be ready for commissioning in 2025 firstly. It is designed to cover the photon energy from 0.4 to 3 keV, in which the baselines of the FEL operation modes are SASE, self-seeding, EEHG and polarization control. Therefore, high repetition-rate external seed laser, large period length modulator, soft X-ray monochromator, planar undulator and elliptically polarized undulator have been adopted in the FEL-II line. Several potentials such as ultra-short pulse mode and multi-color mode are also foreseeable without significant equipment changes in the follow-up operation. Besides, the double period undulator design is suggested for the EEHG commissioning, and meanwhile it is great potential to break through the unreachable energy of the fully coherent X-ray in the future. It is looking forward to deliver SASE radiation and fully coherent radiation in all the wavelengths of interest.