Control of Seeded FEL Pulse Duration Using Laser Heater Pulse Shaping

New Free-Electron Laser facilities deliver VUV and X-ray radiation with pulse length in the range of hundreds and tens of fs. A further reduction of the FEL pulse length is desired by those experiments aiming at probing ultrafast phenomena. Unlike SASE FEL, where the pulse duration is mainly driven by the electron bunch duration, in a seeded FEL the pulse duration can be determined by the seed laser properties. The use of techniques able to locally deteriorate the electron beam properties such as emittance or energy spread have been used in SASE FELs to reduce the region of the electron beam that is able to produce FEL radiation and hence reduce the FEL pulse length. The temporal shaping of the laser heater can be used to create an electron beam characterized by a very large energy spread all along the bunch except for a small region. We report measurements of the effect of the laser heater shaping on the electron beam phase-space performed at FERMI. Impact on the final FEL pulse properties are predicted with a series of numerical simulations.
Proceedings of the 8th Int. Particle Accelerator Conf., IPAC2017, Copenhagen, Denmark