Laser-heater systems have been demonstrated to be an important component for the accelerators that drive high gain free electron laser (FEL) facilities. These heater systems suppress longitudinal micro- bunching instabilities by inducing a small and controllable slice energy spread to the electron beam. For transversely uniform heating, the energy spread augmentation is characterized by a non-Gaussian distribution. In this Letter, we demonstrate experimentally that in addition to suppression of the microbunching instability, the laser heater-induced energy distribution can be preserved to the FEL undulator entrance, significantly impacting the performance of high-gain harmonic generation (HGHG) FELs, especially at soft x-ray wavelengths. In particular, we show that the FEL intensity has several local maxima as a function of the induced heating caused by the non-Gaussian energy distribution together with a strong enhancement of the power at high harmonics relative to that expected for an electron beam with an equivalent Gaussian energy spread at an undulator entrance. These results suggest that a single stage HGHG FEL can produce scientifically interesting power levels at harmonic numbers m ≥ 25 and with current seed laser technology could reach output photon energies above 100 eV or greater.

Impact of non-gaussian electron energy heating upon the performance of a seeded free-electron laser

FERRARI, EUGENIO;
2014-01-01

Abstract

Laser-heater systems have been demonstrated to be an important component for the accelerators that drive high gain free electron laser (FEL) facilities. These heater systems suppress longitudinal micro- bunching instabilities by inducing a small and controllable slice energy spread to the electron beam. For transversely uniform heating, the energy spread augmentation is characterized by a non-Gaussian distribution. In this Letter, we demonstrate experimentally that in addition to suppression of the microbunching instability, the laser heater-induced energy distribution can be preserved to the FEL undulator entrance, significantly impacting the performance of high-gain harmonic generation (HGHG) FELs, especially at soft x-ray wavelengths. In particular, we show that the FEL intensity has several local maxima as a function of the induced heating caused by the non-Gaussian energy distribution together with a strong enhancement of the power at high harmonics relative to that expected for an electron beam with an equivalent Gaussian energy spread at an undulator entrance. These results suggest that a single stage HGHG FEL can produce scientifically interesting power levels at harmonic numbers m ≥ 25 and with current seed laser technology could reach output photon energies above 100 eV or greater.
2014
http://harvest.aps.org/bagit/articles/10.1103/PhysRevLett.112.114802/apsxml
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11368/2857301
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