| Summary: | Ultrashort electron bunches from laser-driven plasma accelerators hold promise as drivers for short-wavelength free electron lasers. While FEL simulation techniques have been successful in simulating lasing at present-day facilities, the novel sources investigated here are likely to violate a number of widely-held assumptions. For instance the HHG seed radiation, as well as the radiation generated by the bunch, may not conform to the slowly-varying envelope approximation (SVEA) on which the majority of codes rely. Additionally, the longitudinal macroparticle binning precludes the modeling of the full physics of the system. In order to more completely simulate the sub-wavelength effects which arise, we have developed an unaveraged 1-D time-dependent code without the SVEA. We use this to perform numerical analyses and highlight some of the additional features that these new systems present. We conclude that while coherent spontaneous emission from ultra-short bunches may significantly affect start-up, the sub-wavelength structure of HHG seeds has little effect.
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