Speaker
Description
To generate ultra-short photon pulses in a free-electron laser (FEL) accurate control of the longitudinal phase space density of the electron bunch that drives the FEL process is required. A novel laser-based technique to manipulate the longitudinal phase space density (T. Tanaka, 2019) has been explored at FLASH. An ultra-short current spike is created by compressing part of an electron bunch via a laser-induced energy modulation with a linearly changing envelope. Suitable modulation is created by shaped laser pulses in a laser heater before the electrons reach their final energy. As the FEL process is limited to the ultra-short current spike, a strong reduction of the photon pulse duration is achieved. Creation of the current spike and the generation of ultra-short photon pulses is observed in measurements of the longitudinal phase space density downstream of the radiator undulators. Estimates of the FEL pulse durations are determined from measurements of the photon spectra obtained at FLASH. Further, simulations show that laser-driven local compression is a viable method to enable attosecond pulses at the SASE1 beamline of the European XFEL.
Funding Agency
BMBF (05K22PE1)
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