Orbital angular momentum beam generation using a free-electron laser oscillator
FEL Laboratory, TUNL and Department of Physics, Duke University（杜克大学物理系与TUNL自由电子激光实验室）；Department of Physics, The George Washington University（乔治华盛顿大学物理系）；Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility（托马斯杰弗逊国家加速器设施）
Peifan Liu, Jun Yan, Andrei Afanasev, Stephen V. Benson, Hao Hao, Stepan F. Mikhailov, Victor G. Popov, Ying K. Wu
With wavelength tunability, free-electron lasers (FELs) are well-suited for generating orbital angular momentum (OAM) beams in a wide photon energy range. We report the first experimental demonstration of OAM beam generation using an oscillator FEL. Lasing around 458 nm, we have produced the four lowest orders of coherently mixed OAM beams with good beam quality, excellent stability, and substantial intracavity power. We have also developed a pulsed mode operation of the OAM beam with a highly reproducible temporal structure for a range of modulation frequencies from 1 to 30 Hz. This development can be extended to short wavelengths, for example to x-rays using a future x-ray FEL oscillator. The operation of such an OAM FEL also paves the way for the generation of OAM gamma-ray beams via Compton scattering.
The low-gain free-electron laser (FEL) oscillators are cutting-edge tools to produce fully coherent radiation in the spectral region from terahertz to vacuum ultraviolet, and potentially in hard X-ray. In this paper, it is proposed to utilize an FEL oscillator with multi-stage undulators to enable gain cascading in a single-pass, making it possible to achieve shorter single pulse lengths, higher peak power, and even higher pulse energy than classical FEL oscillator. Theoretical analysis and numerical simulations in the infrared and hard X-ray regions show that our proposal is effective.
The generation of light beams carrying orbital angular momentum (OAM) from a free-electron laser at short wavelengths has attracted considerable attention as a key resource in several fields and applications. Herein, we present a facile method to generate intense and coherent OAM beams from an X-ray free-electron laser oscillator (XFELO). We use the Bragg crystal as both a reflector as well as mode selector, in both longitudinal and transverse modes, which enables the specified resonance deviation that maximizes the single-pass gain of the high-order OAM mode of interest. This can allow the am…
We propose a scheme to generate carrier-envelope-phase (CEP) stabilized few-cycle optical pulses from a free-electron laser oscillator. The CEP stabilization is realized by continuous injection of CEP-stabilized seed pulses from an external laser to the FEL oscillator whose cavity length is perfectly synchronized to the electron bunch repetition. Such CEP-stabilized few-cycle FEL pulses will be an efficient driver for exploring high-harmonic generation at energies 1-10~keV for attosecond and zeptosecond science, broad-band x-ray optical frequency combs and coherent control of chemical reaction…
A simplified theoretical model for free-electron laser oscillator (FELO) simulation which reserves the main physics is proposed. In stead of using traditional macro particles sampling method, the theoretical model takes advantages of low gain theory to calculate the optical power single-pass gain in the undulator analytically, and some reasonable approximations are made to simplify the calculation of power growth in the cavity. The theoretical analysis of single-pass gain, power growth, time-dependent laser profile evolution and cavity desynchronism are accomplished more efficiently. We presen…
We analyze the behavior of Free Electron Laser (FEL) oscillators operating in the deep saturated regime and point out the formation of sub-peaks of the optical pulse. They are very stable configurations, having a width corresponding to a coherence length. We speculate on the physical mechanisms underlying their growth and attempt an identification with FEL mode locked structures associated with Super Modes. Their impact on the intra-cavity nonlinear harmonic generation is also discussed along with the possibility of exploiting them as cavity out-coupler.
Oscillators are at the heart of optical lasers, providing stable transform limited pulses. In contrast, X-ray free electron lasers use self-amplified spontaneous emission (SASE), resulting in large stochastic intensity and spectral fluctuations. Amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) of the $Kα_1$ line has been recently observed for Ne gas, Cu compounds and Mn solutions at the LCLS and SACLA X-ray free electron lasers (XFELs), using an X-ray SASE pulse as a pump to create population inversion. Here we describe the physics and realization of an X-ray laser oscillator (XLO) based on periodically p…
X-ray beams carrying orbital angular momentum (OAM) are an emerging tool for probing matter. Optical elements, such as spiral phase plates and zone plates, have been widely used to generate OAM light. However, these optics are challenging to use at x-ray free-electron lasers (XFELs) due to the high impinging intensities. Here, we propose a self-seeded FEL method to produce intense x-ray vortices. Unlike passive filtering after amplification, an optical element will be used to introduce the helical phase in the linear regime, significantly reducing the thermal load on the optical element. The g…
Free-electron lasers (FELs) have been designed to operate over virtually the entire electromagnetic spectrum from microwaves through x-rays and in a variety of configurations including amplifiers and oscillators. Oscillators can operate in both the low and high gain regime and are typically used to improve the spatial and temporal coherence of the light generated. We will discuss various FEL oscillators ranging from systems with high-quality resonators combined with low-gain undulators to systems with a low-quality resonator combined with a high-gain undulator line. The FEL gain code MINERVA a…
High-intensity, fully coherent X-ray radiation with a tunable polarization over a wide spectral range is of great importance to many experiments. In this paper, we propose a tapered crossed-polarized undulator configuration for X-ray free electron laser oscillator (XFELO) to produce arbitrarily polarized X-ray pulses in hard X-ray region. A numerical example utilizing the parameters of the Shanghai High-Repetition-Rate XFEL and Extreme Light Facility (SHINE) is presented to demonstrate the generation of polarization controllable, fully coherent Hard X-ray pulses with 99.9% polarization degree …
X-ray free-electron laser oscillator (XFELO) is expected to be a cutting edge tool for fully coherent X-ray laser generation, and undulator taper technique is well-known for considerably increasing the efficiency of free-electron lasers (FELs). In order to combine the advantages of these two schemes, FEL amplifier seeded by XFELO is proposed by simply using a chirped electron beam. With the right choice of the beam parameters, the bunch tail is within the gain bandwidth of XFELO, and lase to saturation, which will be served as a seeding for further amplification. Meanwhile, the bunch head whic…
The X-ray free-electron laser oscillator (XFELO) has recently been reconsidered a promising candidate for producing high-brightness, fully coherent pulses in the hard X-ray regime. This letter proposes a gain-guided XFELO scheme, avoiding the external focusing elements required for conventional configuration. Self-consistent theoretical analysis and three-dimensional numerical simulation results verify that the X-ray transverse mode in such an "unstable" cavity is stable and robust due to electron beam gain-guiding. This scheme is capable of generating 14.3 keV photons of FEL radiation with pe…
FELiChEM is a new experimental facility under construction at University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), whose core device is two free electron laser oscillators generating middle-infrared and far-infrared laser and covering the spectral range of 2.5-200 $μ$m. It will be a dedicated infrared light source aiming at energy chemistry research. We present the brief design of FEL oscillators with the emphasis put on the middle-infrared oscillator. Most of the basic parameters are determined and the anticipated performance of the output radiation is given. The first light of FELiChEM is t…
Modern electron storage rings produce bright X-rays via spontaneous synchrotron emission, which is useful for a variety of scientific applications. The X-ray free-electron laser oscillator (XFELO) has the potential to amplify this output, both in terms of peak power and photon coherence. However, even current 4th generation storage rings (4GSRs) lack the requisite electron beam brightness to drive the XFELO due to its electron energy spread. The transverse gradient undulator (TGU) can overcome this issue, thus providing a practical means to couple the 4GSR to the XFELO. In this study, we first…
Fine time-resolved analysis of matter - i.e. spectroscopy and photon scattering - in the linear response regime requires a fs-scale pulsed, high repetition rate, fully coherent X-ray source. A seeded Free-Electron Laser (FEL) driven by a Super-Conducting Linac, generating $10^{8}$-$10^{10}$ coherent photons at 2-5 keV with abou 0.5 MHz of repetition rate, can address this need. The seeding scheme proposed is the Echo-Enabled Harmonic Generation, alimented by a FEL Oscillator working at 13.6 nm with a cavity based on Mo-Si mirrors. The whole chain of the X-ray generation is here described by me…
X-ray free electron laser oscillators (XFELO) is future light source to produce fully coherent hard X-ray pulses. The X-rays circulate in an optical cavity built from multiple Bragg reflecting mirrors, which has a high reflectance in a bandwidth of ten meV level. The X-ray crystal mirrors exposed to intense X-ray beams in the cavity are subjects to thermal deformations that shift and distort the Bragg reflection. Therefore, the stability of the XFELO operation relies on the abilities of mirrors to preserve the Bragg reflection under such heat load. A new approach was used to analyze the heat l…
Shanghai Coherent Light Facility (SCLF) is a quasi-CW hard X-ray free electron laser user facility which is recently proposed. Due to the high repetition rate, high quality electron beams, it is straightforward to consider an X-ray free electron laser oscillator (XFELO) operation for SCLF. The main processes for XFELO design, and parameters optimization of the undulator, X-ray cavity and electron beam are described. The first three-dimensional X-ray crystal Bragg diffraction code, named BRIGHT is built, which collaborates closely with GENESIS and OPC for numerical simulations of XFELO. The XFE…
