Comparison of short pulse generation schemes for a soft x-ray free electron laser
In this paper we study the performance of two complementary short pulse generation schemes as applied to a soft x-ray free electron laser. The first scheme, recently proposed by Saldin et al., makes use of a laser pulse consisting of only a few optical cycles to give an energy chirp to a short secti...
Main Authors: | , |
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Format: | Journal article |
Language: | English |
Published: |
2011
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Summary: | In this paper we study the performance of two complementary short pulse generation schemes as applied to a soft x-ray free electron laser. The first scheme, recently proposed by Saldin et al., makes use of a laser pulse consisting of only a few optical cycles to give an energy chirp to a short section of an electron bunch and tapers the main radiator undulator in order to compensate the chirped region. The second scheme investigated takes a low-charge, high brightness electron bunch and compresses it to ∼1fs in order to operate in the so-called "single-spike" regime. We perform start-to-end simulations of both these schemes, assess the sensitivity of each scheme to realistic jitter sources, and provide a direct comparison of the respective strengths and drawbacks. © 2011 American Physical Society. |
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