Isolated few-cycle radiation from chirped-pulse compression of a superradiant free-electron laser

When a short electron bunch traverses an undulator to radiate a wavelength longer than the bunch length, intense superradiance from the electron bunch can quickly deplete the electron’s kinetic energy and lead to generation of an isolated chirped radiation pulse. Here, we develop a theory to describ...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Yen-Chieh Huang (黃衍介), Zhen Zhang (张振), Chia-Hsiang Chen (陳家祥), Ming-Hsiung Wu (吳明雄)
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: American Physical Society 2015-08-01
Series:Physical Review Special Topics. Accelerators and Beams
Online Access:http://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevSTAB.18.080701
Description
Summary:When a short electron bunch traverses an undulator to radiate a wavelength longer than the bunch length, intense superradiance from the electron bunch can quickly deplete the electron’s kinetic energy and lead to generation of an isolated chirped radiation pulse. Here, we develop a theory to describe this novel chirped pulse radiation in a superradiant free-electron laser and show the opportunity to generate isolated few-cycle high-power radiation through chirped-pulse compression after the undulator. The theory is completely characterized by how fast the electron energy is depleted for a given length of an undulator. We further present two design examples at the THz and extreme-ultraviolet wavelengths and numerically generate isolated three- and nine-cycle radiation pulses, respectively.
ISSN:1098-4402