Search

Free-electron lasers (FELs) can produce bright X-ray pulses, but require high quality electron beams. Here the authors show how to generate and preserve ultrabright electron beams from plasma-based accelerators for ultra-compact, high-brightness X-ray FELs.

A new method to generate short wavelength free-electron laser output with modulated polarization at attosecond timescales is presented. Simulations demonstrate polarization switching timescales that are four orders of magnitude faster than the current state of the art and, at x-ray wavelengths, approaching the atomic unit of time of approximately 24 attoseconds. Such polarization control has significant potential in the study of ultrafast atomic and molecular processes. The output alternates between either orthogonal linear or circularly polarized light without the need for any polarizing optical elements. This facilitates operation at the high brightness x-ray wavelengths associated with FELs. As the method uses an afterburner configuration it would be relatively easy to install at existing FEL facilities, greatly expanding their research capability.

A numerical algorithm for simulating electron beam shot noise in free electron lasers (FELs) is presented. Shot noise is a source of spontaneous emission that may be amplified in the self-amplified spontaneous emission regime of operation. This regime is of great importance to XUV and x-ray FELs where the spontaneous emission is currently the only effective source available for amplification. The algorithm uses a quasiuniform phase-space distribution of appropriately charge weighted macroparticles. The statistical properties of the macroparticles are derived directly from the temporal Poisson statistical properties of the real electron distribution. Unlike previous algorithms, ours does not rely upon any averaging over a resonant radiation period time scale and so more correctly describes the underlying physics. The algorithm also allows shot noise to be modeled self-consistently in unaveraged FEL models which are able to describe subwavelength phenomena such as coherent spontaneous emission (CSE). The algorithm is used in the unaveraged 1D FEL numerical simulation code FemFel and demonstrates spontaneous emission due to shot noise and CSE in both rectangular and Gaussian electron pulse current profiles. The preliminary results show good qualitative and quantitative agreement with theory.

Plasma accelerators (Esary et al 2009 Rev. Mod. Phys.81 1229) are a potentially important source of high energy, low emittance electron beams with high peak currents generated within a relatively short distance. As such, they may have an important application in the driving of coherent light sources such as the Free Electron Laser (FEL) which operate into the x-ray region (McNeil and Thompson 2010 Nat. Photon.4 814–21). While novel plasma photocathodes (Hidding et al 2012 Phys. Rev. Lett.108 035001) may offer orders of magnitude improvement to the normalized emittance and brightness of electron beams compared to Radio Frequency-driven accelerators, a substantial challenge is the energy spread and chirp of beams, which can make FEL operation impossible. In this paper it is shown that such an energy-chirped, ultrahigh brightness electron beam, with dynamically evolving current profile due to ballistic bunching at moderate energies, can generate significant coherent radiation output via the process of Coherent Spontaneous Emission (CSE) (Campbell and McNeil 2012 Proc. FEL2012 (Nara, Japan)). While this CSE is seen to cause some FEL-induced electron bunching at the radiation wavelength, the dynamic evolution of the energy chirped pulse dampens out any high-gain FEL interaction. This work may offer the prospect of a future plasma driven FEL operating in the high-gain Self Amplified CSE mode. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A model of a free electron laser (FEL) operating with an elliptically polarised undulator is presented. The equations describing the FEL interaction, including resonant harmonic radiation fields, are averaged over an undulator period and generate a generalised Bessel function scaling factor, similar to that of planar undulator FEL theory. Comparison between simulations of the averaged model with those of an unaveraged model show very good agreement in the linear regime. Two unexpected results were found. Firstly, an increased coupling to harmonics for elliptical rather than planar polarisarised undulators. Secondly, and thought to be unrelated to the undulator polarisation, a significantly different evolution between the averaged and unaveraged simulations of the harmonic radiation evolution approaching FEL saturation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several methods have been proposed in the literature to improve free electron laser output by transforming the electron phase-space before entering the FEL interaction region. By utilizing ‘beam by design’ with novel undulators and other beam changing elements, the operating capability of FELs may be further usefully extended. This paper introduces two new such methods to improve output from electron pulses with large energy spreads and the results of simulations of these methods in the 1D limit are presented. Both methods predict orders of magnitude improvements to output radiation powers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of a broad bandwidth, two-colour free electron laser (FEL) amplifier using one monoenergetic electron beam are presented. The two-colour FEL interaction is achieved using a series of undulator modules alternately tuned to two well-separated resonant frequencies. Using the broad bandwidth FEL simulation code Puffin, the electron beam is shown to bunch strongly and simultaneously at the two resonant frequencies. Electron bunching components are also generated at the sum and difference of the resonant frequencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Free-electron lasers (FELs) operate at wavelengths from millimeter waves through hard x-rays. At x-ray wavelengths, FELs typically rely on self-amplified spontaneous emission (SASE). Typical SASE emission contains multiple temporal ‘spikes’ which limit the longitudinal coherence of the optical output; hence, alternate schemes that improve on the longitudinal coherence of the SASE emission are of interest. In this paper, we consider electron bunches that are shorter than the SASE spike separation. In such cases, the spontaneously generated radiation consists of a single optical pulse with better longitudinal coherence than is found in typical SASE FELs. To investigate this regime, we use two FEL simulation codes. One (MINERVA) uses the slowly-varying envelope approximation (SVEA) which breaks down for extremely short pulses. The second (PUFFIN) is a particle-in-cell simulation code that is considered to be a more complete model of the underlying physics and which is able to simulate very short pulses. We first anchor these codes by showing that there is substantial agreement between the codes in simulation of the SPARC SASE FEL experiment at ENEA Frascati. We then compare the two codes for simulations using electron bunch lengths that are shorter than the SASE slice separation. The comparisons between the two codes for short bunch simulations elucidate the limitations of the SVEA in this regime but indicate that the SVEA can treat short bunches that are comparable to the cooperation length.