Attosecond x-ray free-electron lasers utilizing an optical undulator in a self-selection regime
Accelerator-based x-ray free-electron lasers (XFELs) are the latest addition to the revolutionary tools of discovery for the 21st century. The two major components of an XFEL are an accelerator-produced electron beam and a magnetic undulator, which tend to be kilometer-scale long and expensive. A pr...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
American Physical Society
2024-01-01
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| Series: | Physical Review Accelerators and Beams |
| Online Access: | http://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevAccelBeams.27.011301 |
| _version_ | 1797352916620673024 |
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| author | Xinlu Xu Jiaxin Liu Thamine Dalichaouch Frank S. Tsung Zhen Zhang Zhirong Huang Mark J. Hogan Xueqing Yan Chan Joshi Warren B. Mori |
| author_facet | Xinlu Xu Jiaxin Liu Thamine Dalichaouch Frank S. Tsung Zhen Zhang Zhirong Huang Mark J. Hogan Xueqing Yan Chan Joshi Warren B. Mori |
| author_sort | Xinlu Xu |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Accelerator-based x-ray free-electron lasers (XFELs) are the latest addition to the revolutionary tools of discovery for the 21st century. The two major components of an XFEL are an accelerator-produced electron beam and a magnetic undulator, which tend to be kilometer-scale long and expensive. A proof-of-principle demonstration of free-electron lasing at 27 nm using beams from compact laser wakefield accelerators was shown recently by using a magnetic undulator. However, scaling these concepts to x-ray wavelengths is far from straightforward as the requirements on the beam quality and jitters become much more stringent. Here, we present an ultracompact scheme to produce tens of attosecond x-ray pulses with several GW peak power utilizing a novel aspect of the FEL instability using a highly chirped, prebunched, and ultrabright tens of MeV electron beam from a plasma-based accelerator interacting with an optical undulator. The FEL resonant relation between the prebunched period and the energy selects resonant electrons automatically from the highly chirped beam which leads to a stable generation of attosecond x-ray pulses. Furthermore, two-color attosecond pulses with subfemtosecond separation can be produced by adjusting the energy distribution of the electron beam so that multiple FEL resonances occur at different locations within the beam. Such a tunable coherent attosecond x-ray sources may open up a new area of attosecond science enabled by x-ray attosecond pump/probe techniques. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-08T13:22:42Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-8023a6a4c55d49639bfcec8bf4838240 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 2469-9888 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-08T13:22:42Z |
| publishDate | 2024-01-01 |
| publisher | American Physical Society |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Physical Review Accelerators and Beams |
| spelling | doaj.art-8023a6a4c55d49639bfcec8bf48382402024-01-17T16:03:13ZengAmerican Physical SocietyPhysical Review Accelerators and Beams2469-98882024-01-0127101130110.1103/PhysRevAccelBeams.27.011301Attosecond x-ray free-electron lasers utilizing an optical undulator in a self-selection regimeXinlu XuJiaxin LiuThamine DalichaouchFrank S. TsungZhen ZhangZhirong HuangMark J. HoganXueqing YanChan JoshiWarren B. MoriAccelerator-based x-ray free-electron lasers (XFELs) are the latest addition to the revolutionary tools of discovery for the 21st century. The two major components of an XFEL are an accelerator-produced electron beam and a magnetic undulator, which tend to be kilometer-scale long and expensive. A proof-of-principle demonstration of free-electron lasing at 27 nm using beams from compact laser wakefield accelerators was shown recently by using a magnetic undulator. However, scaling these concepts to x-ray wavelengths is far from straightforward as the requirements on the beam quality and jitters become much more stringent. Here, we present an ultracompact scheme to produce tens of attosecond x-ray pulses with several GW peak power utilizing a novel aspect of the FEL instability using a highly chirped, prebunched, and ultrabright tens of MeV electron beam from a plasma-based accelerator interacting with an optical undulator. The FEL resonant relation between the prebunched period and the energy selects resonant electrons automatically from the highly chirped beam which leads to a stable generation of attosecond x-ray pulses. Furthermore, two-color attosecond pulses with subfemtosecond separation can be produced by adjusting the energy distribution of the electron beam so that multiple FEL resonances occur at different locations within the beam. Such a tunable coherent attosecond x-ray sources may open up a new area of attosecond science enabled by x-ray attosecond pump/probe techniques.http://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevAccelBeams.27.011301 |
| spellingShingle | Xinlu Xu Jiaxin Liu Thamine Dalichaouch Frank S. Tsung Zhen Zhang Zhirong Huang Mark J. Hogan Xueqing Yan Chan Joshi Warren B. Mori Attosecond x-ray free-electron lasers utilizing an optical undulator in a self-selection regime Physical Review Accelerators and Beams |
| title | Attosecond x-ray free-electron lasers utilizing an optical undulator in a self-selection regime |
| title_full | Attosecond x-ray free-electron lasers utilizing an optical undulator in a self-selection regime |
| title_fullStr | Attosecond x-ray free-electron lasers utilizing an optical undulator in a self-selection regime |
| title_full_unstemmed | Attosecond x-ray free-electron lasers utilizing an optical undulator in a self-selection regime |
| title_short | Attosecond x-ray free-electron lasers utilizing an optical undulator in a self-selection regime |
| title_sort | attosecond x ray free electron lasers utilizing an optical undulator in a self selection regime |
| url | http://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevAccelBeams.27.011301 |
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