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Here we present results of start-to-end particle-in-cell and GPT simulations of coherent synchrotron radiation in the visible and ultraviolet. The radiation is produced by laser-driven attosecond electron bunches travelling through an undulator.

Attosecond duration relativistic electron bunches travelling through an undulator can generate brilliant coherent radiation in the visible to vacuum ultraviolet spectral range. We present comprehensive numerical simulations to study the properties of coherent emission for a wide range of electron energies and bunch durations, including space-charge effects. These demonstrate that electron bunches with r.m.s. duration of 50 as, nominal charge of 0.1 pC and energy range of 100–250 MeV produce $$10^9$$ 10 9 coherent photons per pulse in the 100–600 nm wavelength range. We show that this can be enhanced substantially by self-compressing negatively chirped 100 pC bunches in the undulator to produce $$10^{14}$$ 10 14 coherent photons with pulse duration of 0.5–3 fs.

With the increase of laser power at facilities reaching petawatt-level, there is a need for accurate electron beam diagnostics of the laser wakefield accelerator (LWFA), which are becoming important tools for a wide range of applications including high field physics. Electrons in the range of several 10 0s of GeV are expected at these power levels. Precise diagnostic systems are required to enable applications such as advanced radiation sources. Accurate measurement of the energy spread of electron beams will help pave the way towards LWFA based free-electron lasers and plasma based coherent radiation sources. We propose an innovative double dipole spectrometer suitable for characterizing bunches produced using a petawatt class laser.

The impact of electron–electron interactions in the post-specimen region of ultrafast electron diffraction and dynamic transmission electron microscopy instruments has been studied. Specifically, space-charge induced distortions of ultrafast electron diffraction patterns from single crystal specimens and their dependence on electron bunch-charge, beam energy, energy spread, focusing conditions and specimen thickness have been investigated using the General Particle Tracer code. We have found that these space-charge interactions lead to significant broadening and displacement of the Bragg spots at currently realizable electron beam illumination conditions. These impacts increase in severity with beam brightness and are reduced with increasing (relativistic) beam energies. The primary mechanism for the distortions has been determined to be space-charge interactions between the scattered beamlets and the main unscattered beam. Overall, these results suggest that creative post-specimen electron optical design, relativistic beam energies and post-processing of diffraction patterns to correct for space-charge distortion should be explored as routes to make good use of any future enhancements to beam brightness in UED and DTEM instruments.

Ultrafast Electron Diffraction (UED) has been widely used to investigate the structural dynamics of molecules and materials. Femtosecond (fs) electron bunches are used to obtain diffraction images of a specimen upon photo-excitation by a temporally delayed light pulse. The high cross-section of electrons makes it a very flexible tool for the study of light elements, monolayers and surfaces; at the same time, electrons can travel down to few nanometers (nm) and structural information from the bulk can also be retrieved. In this article, we discuss the design and implementation of a flexible beamline for fs electron diffraction experiments in transmission or reflection geometry. By the use of a radiofrequency (RF) compression cavity synchronized to our laser system, in combination with a set of electron optics, we demonstrate that we can control the beam properties in terms of charge per pulse, transverse spot-size on the sample and temporal duration of the bunches. The characterization of the beam is performed via a light-electrons cross-correlation experiment and we demonstrate an overall temporal resolution around 300 fs for bunches containing up to 10(5) electrons at a repetition rate of 20 kHz. (c) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Numerical prediction of charged particle dynamics in accelerators is essential for the design and understanding of these machines. The calculation of space charge forces influencing the behaviour of a particle bunch is still a bottleneck of existing tracking codes.