This paper describes an effective frequency doubler scheme for SASE free electron lasers. It consists of an undulator tuned to the first harmonic, a dispersion section, and a tapered undulator tuned to the second harmonic. The first stage is a conventional soft X-ray SASE FEL. Its gain is controlled in such a way that the maximum energy modulation of the electron beam at the exit is about equal to the local energy spread, but still far away from saturation. When the electron bunch passes through the dispersion section this energy modulation leads to effective compression of the particles. Then the bunched electron beam enters the tapered undulator and produces strong radiation in the process of coherent deceleration. We demonstrate that a frequency doubler scheme can be integrated into the SASE FEL at the TESLA Test Facility at DESY, and will allow to reach 3 nm wavelength with GW-level of output peak power. This would extend the operating range of the FEL into the so-called water window and significantly expand the capabilities of the TTF FEL user facility.
In this letter we specify the physical parameters necessary to operate a SASE FEL in the quantum regime with a laser wiggler. We also show that this is more feasible in the quantum regime than in the classical one. Specific examples are given.
Recent theoretical and experimental studies have shown that Self-Amplified Spontaneous Emission Free Electron Laser (SASE FEL) with a planar undulator holds a potential for generation of relatively strong coherent radiation at the third harmonic of the fundamental frequency. Here we present detailed study of the nonlinear harmonic generation in the SASE FEL obtained with time-dependent FEL simulation code. Using similarity techniques we present universal dependencies for temporal, spectral, and statistical properties of the odd harmonics of the radiation from SASE FEL. In particular, we derive…
Phase 1 of the vacuum ultra-violet (VUV) free-electron laser (FEL) at the TESLA Test Facility (TTF) recently concluded operation. It successfully demonstrated the saturation of a SASE FEL in the in the wavelength range of 80-120 nm. We present a posteriori start-to-end numerical simulations of this FEL. These simulations are based on the programs Astra and elegant for the generation and transport of the electron distribution. An independent simulation of the intricate beam dynamics in the magnetic bunch compressor is performed with the program CSRtrack. The SASE FEL process is simulated with t…
We discuss the conditions required for an optimal SASE FEL operation when bunch compression techniques are exploited to enhance the bunch peak current. We discuss the case of velocity bunching and magnetic bunch compression. With the reference to the latter technique we provide a quantitative estimate of the amount of laser heater power necessary to suppress the micro-bunching instability without creating any problem to the SASE dynamics
A SASE FEL facility was first proposed in Feasibility Report of the TAC (Turkish Accelerator Center) project in 2000. Conceptual Design Report (CDR) of the project was completed in 2005. Technical Design Report (TDR) studies of TAC were started in 2006 in frame of an inter universities project with support of State Planning Organization (SPO) of Turkey. Main goal of the SASE FEL proposal is to cover VUV and soft X-rays region of the spectrum besides IR-FEL, Bremsstrahlung and Synchrotron Radiation proposals of TAC. Up to now, optimization studies based on a special RF linac or an Energy Recove…
There is a growing interest in producing intense, coherent x-ray radiation with an adjustable and arbitrary polarization state. In this paper, we study the crossed undulator scheme (K.-J. Kim, Nucl. Instrum. Methods A {\bf 445}, 329 (2000)) for rapid polarization control in a self-amplified spontaneous emission (SASE) free electron laser (FEL). Because a SASE source is a temporally chaotic light, we perform a statistical analysis on the state of polarization using FEL theory and simulations. We show that by adding a small phase shifter and a short (about 1.3 times the FEL power gain length), $…
We describe a free-electron laser (FEL) in the Self Amplified Spontaneous Emission (SASE) regime quantizing the electron motion and taking into account propagation effects. We demonstrate quantum purification of the SASE spectrum, i.e., in a properly defined quantum regime the spiking behavior disappears and the SASE power spectrum becomes very narrow.
We describe statistical and coherence properties of the radiation from x-ray free electron lasers (XFEL) operating in the post-saturation regime. We consider practical case of the SASE3 FEL at the European XFEL. We perform comparison of the main characteristics of the X-ray FEL operating in the post-saturation regime with and without undulator tapering: efficiency, coherence time and degree of transverse coherence.
We explore the possibility of operating a SASE FEL with a Storage Ring. We use a semi-analytical model to obtain the evolution inside the undulator by taking into account the interplay on the laser dynamics due to the induced energy spread and to the radiation damping. We obtain the Renieri's limit for the stationary output power and discuss the possibility of including in our model the effect of the beam instabilities.
The existence of a characteristic coherence length in FEL SASE Physics determines the independent lasing of different portions, namely the slices, of the electron bunch. Each slice may be characterized by different phase space properties (not necessarily equal emittances and Twiss coefficients). This fact opens new questions on the concept of beam matching and how the various portions of the beam contribute to the performances of the output radiation, including those associated with the transverse coherence.
The optical klystron enhancement to self-amplified spontaneous emission (SASE) free electron lasers (FELs) is studied in theory and in simulations. In contrast to a seeded FEL, the optical klystron gain in a SASE FEL is not sensitive to any phase mismatch between the radiation and the microbunched electron beam. The FEL performance with the addition of four optical klystrons located at the undulator long breaks in the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) shows significant improvement if the uncorrelated energy spread at the undulator entrance can be controlled to a very small level. In addition,…
Newly developed high peak power lasers have opened the possibilities of driving coherent light sources operating with laser plasma accelerated beams and wave undulators. We speculate on the combination of these two concepts and show that the merging of the underlying technologies could lead to new and interesting possibilities to achieve truly compact, coherent radiator devices.
The magnetic gap of the baseline XFEL undulators can be varied mechanically for wavelength tuning. In particular, the wavelength range 0.1 nm - 0.4 nm can be covered by operating the European XFEL with the SASE2 undulator. The length of the SASE2 undulator (256.2 m) is sufficient to independently generate three pulses of different radiation wavelengths at saturation. Normally, if a SASE FEL operates in saturation, the quality of the electron beam is too bad for generation of SASE radiation in the subsequent part of undulator which is resonant at a few times longer wavelength. The new method of…
Influence of a linear energy chirp in the electron beam on a SASE FEL operation is studied analytically and numerically using 1-D model. Explicit expressions for Green's functions and for output power of a SASE FEL are obtained for high-gain linear regime in the limits of small and large energy chirp parameter. Saturation length and power versus energy chirp parameter are calculated numerically. It is shown that the effect of linear energy chirp on FEL gain is equivalent to the linear undulator tapering (or linear energy variation along the undulator). A consequence of this fact is a possibili…
We propose a scheme for generation of single 100 GW 300-as pulse in the X-ray free electron laser with the use of a few cycles optical pulse from Ti:sapphire laser system. Femtosecond optical pulse interacts with the electron beam in the two-period undulator resonant to 800 nm wavelength and produces energy modulation within a slice of the electron bunch. Following the energy modulator the electron beam enters the first part of the baseline gap-adjustable X-ray undulator and produces SASE radiation with 100 MW-level power. Due to energy modulation the frequency is correlated to the longitudina…
Simple formulas for optimization of VUV and X-ray SASE FELs are presented. The FEL gain length and the optimal beta-function are explicitly expressed in terms of the electron beam and undulator parameters. The FEL saturation length is estimated taking into account quantum diffusion in the undulator. Examples of the FEL optimization are given. Parameters of a SASE FEL, operating at the Compton wavelength, are suggested.
Free-electron lasers (FELs) operate at wavelengths from millimeter waves through hard x-rays. At x-ray wavelengths, FELs typically rely on self-amplified spontaneous emission (SASE). Typical SASE emission contains multiple temporal "spikes" which limit the longitudinal coherence of the optical output; hence, alternate schemes that improve on the longitudinal coherence of the SASE emission are of interest. In this paper, we consnider electron bunches that are shorter than the SASE spike separation. In such cases, the spontaneously generated radiation consists of a single optical pulse with bett…
We discuss the new problems emerging in charged beam transport for SASE FEL dynamics. The optimization of the magnetic transport system for future devices requires new concepts associated with the slice emittance and the slice phase space distribution. We study the problem of electron beam slice matching and guiding in transport devices for SASE FEL emission discussing matching criteria and how the associated design of the electron transport line may affect the FEL output performances. We analyze different matching strategies by studying the relevant effect on the FEL output characteristics.
A method to achieve High-Brightness Self-Amplified Spontaneous Emission (HB-SASE) in the Free Electron Laser (FEL) is described. The method uses repeated non-equal electron beam delays to de-localise the collective FEL interaction and break the radiation coherence length dependence on the FEL cooperation length. The method requires no external seeding or photon optics and so is applicable at any wavelength or repetition rate. It is demonstrated using linear theory and numerical simulations that the radiation coherence length can be increased by approximately two orders of magnitude over SASE w…
In recent years X-ray Free Electron Lasers (XFELs) proved to be unmatched sources of ultrashort pulses of spatially coherent quasimonochromatic X-ray radiation. Diagnostics of XFEL emission properties, in particular pulse duration, spectrum and temporal profile is extremely important in order to analyze the experimental results. In this paper we propose a cost-effective method to examine these properties of Self-Amplified Spontaneous Emission (SASE) pulses. It only requires an ensemble of measured SASE spectra and provides the temporal autocorrelation of the ensemble-averaged Wigner distributi…
We propose and analyze a novel regenerative amplifier free electron laser (FEL) to produce fully coherent x-ray pulses. The method makes use of narrow-bandwidth Bragg crystals to form an x-ray feedback loop around a relatively short undulator. Self-amplified spontaneous emission (SASE) from the leading electron bunch in a bunch train is spectrally filtered by the Bragg reflectors and is brought back to the beginning of the undulator to interact repeatedly with subsequent bunches in the bunch train. The FEL interaction with these short bunches not only amplifies the radiation intensity but also…
The purified SASE (pSASE) undulator configuration recently proposed at SLAC promises an increase in the output spectral density of XFELs. In this article we study a straightforward implementation of this configuration for the soft x-ray beamline at the European XFEL. A few undulator cells, resonant at a subharmonic of the FEL radiation, are used in the middle of the exponential regime to amplify the radiation, while simultaneously reducing the FEL bandwidth. Based on start-to-end simulations, we show that with the proposed configuration the spectral density in the photon energy range between 1…
We describe use of the Advanced Photon Source (APS) rf thermionic gun, alpha magnet beamline, and linac to produce a stable high-brightness beam in excess of 100 amperes peak current with normalized emittance of 10 pi mm-mrad. To obtain peak currents greater than 100 amperes, the rf gun system must be tuned to produce a FWHM bunch length on the order of 350 fs. Bunch lengths this short are measured using coherent transition radiation (CTR) produced when the rf gun beam, accelerated to 40 MeV, strikes a metal foil. The CTR is detected using a Golay detector attached to one arm of a Michelson in…
The most promising way to increase the output power of an X-ray FEL (XFEL) is by tapering the magnetic field of the undulator. Also, significant increase in power is achievable by starting the FEL process from a monochromatic seed rather than from noise. This report proposes to make use of a cascade self-seeding scheme with wake monochromators in a tunable-gap baseline undulator at the European XFEL to create a source capable of delivering coherent radiation of unprecedented characteristics at hard X-ray wavelengths. Compared with SASE X-ray FEL parameters, the radiation from the new source ha…
This paper describes a novel single-bunch self-seeding scheme for generating highly monochromatic X-rays from a baseline XFEL undulator. Previous schemes made use of a four-crystal fixed-exit monochromator in Bragg geometry. In such monochromator the X-ray pulse acquires a cm-long path delay, which must be compensated. For a single-bunch self-seeding scheme this requires a long electron beam bypass, implying modifications of the baseline undulator configuration. To avoid this problem, a double bunch self-seeding scheme based on a special photoinjector setup was recently proposed. At variance, …
We present the first observation of Self-Amplified Spontaneous Emission (SASE) in a free-electron laser (FEL) in the Vacuum Ultraviolet regime at 109 nm wavelength (11 eV). The observed free-electron laser gain (approx. 3000) and the radiation characteristics, such as dependency on bunch charge, angular distribution, spectral width and intensity fluctuations all corroborate the existing models for SASE FELs.
Self-seeding is a promising approach to significantly narrow the SASE bandwidth of XFELs to produce nearly transform-limited pulses. The development of such schemes in the soft X-ray wavelength range necessarily involves gratings as dispersive elements. These introduce, in general, a pulse-front tilt, which is directly proportional to the angular dispersion. Pulse-front tilt may easily lead to a seed signal decrease by a factor two or more. Suggestions on how to minimize the pulse-front tilt effect in the self-seeding setup are given.
In this paper, the harmonics suppression effect of QPUs in SASE FEL is investigated. The numerical results show that the harmonics power is reduced by using QPUs, but the fundamental radiation power also has a pronounced decrease as the saturation length gets very long. The cases of employing QPUs as parts of undulators are studied. The calculations show that if the fraction of QPUs and their offgap are appropriate in an undulator system, the harmonics radiation could be suppressed remarkably, meanwhile the fundamental saturation length does not increase too much.
Self-seeding is a promising approach to significantly narrow the SASE bandwidth of XFELs to produce nearly transform-limited pulses. The implementation of this method in the soft X-ray wavelength range necessarily involves gratings as dispersive elements. We study a very compact self-seeding scheme with a grating monochromator originally designed at SLAC, which can be straightforwardly installed in the SASE3 type undulator beamline at the European XFEL. The monochromator design is based on a toroidal VLS grating working at a fixed incidence angle mounting without entrance slit. It covers the s…
The output SASE characteristics of the baseline European XFEL, recently used in the TDRs of scientific instruments and X-ray optics, have been previously optimized assuming uniform undulators without considering the potential of undulator tapering in the SASE regime. Here we demonstrate that the performance of European XFEL sources can be significantly improved without additional hardware. The procedure simply consists in the optimization of the undulator gap configuration for each X-ray beamline. Here we provide a comprehensive description of the soft X-ray photon beam properties as a functio…
Harmonic lasing is a perspective mode of operation of X-ray FEL user facilities that allows to provide brilliant beams of higher energy photons for user experiments. Another useful application of harmonic lasing is so called Harmonic Lasing Self-Seeded Free Electron Laser (HLSS FEL) that allows to improve spectral brightness of these facilities. In the past, harmonic lasing has been demonstrated in the FEL oscillators in infrared and visible wavelength ranges, but not in high-gain FELs and not at short wavelengths. In this paper we report on the first evidence of the harmonic lasing and the fi…
The SASE3 soft X-ray beamline at the European XFEL has been designed and built to provide experiments with pink or monochromatic beam in the photon energy range 250 eV - 3000 eV. Here, we focus on the monochromatic operation of the SASE3 beamline and report on design and performance of the SASE3 grating monochromator. The unique capability of an FEL source to produce short femtosecond pulses of high degree of coherence challenges the monochromator design by a demand to control both photon energy and temporal resolution. The aim to transport close to transform-limited pulses poses very high dem…
In this article we derive longitudinal impedance and wake function for an undulator setup with arbitrary undulator parameter, taking into account a finite transverse size of the electron bunch. Earlier studies considered a line density-distribution of electrons instead. We focus our attention on the long-wavelength asymptote (compared with resonance wavelength), at large distance of the electron bunch from the undulator entrance compared to the overtaking length, and for large vacuum-chamber size compared to the typical transverse size of the field. These restrictions define a parameter region…
The single-pulse spectrum of self-amplified spontaneous emission (SASE) free electron lasers (FELs) is characterized by random fluctuations in frequency. The typical spectrum bandwidth for a hard x-ray FEL is in the range of 10-20 eV and is comparable with the distance between energy levels of valence electrons in atoms an molecules. We calculate the rate of transitions in a quantum three-level system with the energy difference of several eV caused by such radiation and show that for x-ray intensities in the range of $10^{20}$ W/cm$^2$ the probability of the transition over the duration of the…
We demonstrate that the output radiation characteristics of the European XFEL sources at nominal operation point can be easily made significantly better than what is currently reported in the TDRs of scientific instruments and X-ray optics. In fact, the output SASE characteristics of the baseline European XFEL have been previously optimized assuming uniform undulators at a nominal operating point of 5 kA peak current, without considering the potential of udulator tapering in the SASE regime. In order to illustrate this point, we analyze the case of an electron bunch with nominal parameters. Ba…
One goal of XFEL facilities is the production of narrow bandwidth X-ray radiation. The self-seeding scheme was proposed to obtain a bandwidth narrower than that achievable with conventional X-ray SASE FELs. A self-seeded FEL is composed of two undulators separated by a monochromator and an electron beam bypass that must compensate for the path delay of X-rays in the monochromator. This leads to a long bypass, with a length in the order of 40-60 m, which requires modifications of the baseline undulator configuration. As an attempt to get around this obstacle, together with a study of the self-s…
Baseline design of a typical X-ray FEL undulator assumes a planar configuration which results in a linear polarization of the FEL radiation. However, many experiments at X-ray FEL user facilities would profit from using a circularly polarized radiation. As a cheap upgrade one can consider an installation of a short helical (or cross-planar) afterburner, but then one should have an efficient method to suppress powerful linearly polarized background from the main undulator. In this paper we propose a new method for such a suppression: an application of the reverse taper in the main undulator. We…
The statistical features of the radiation emitted by Free-Electron Lasers (FELs), either by Self-Amplified Spontaneous Emission (SASE-FELs) or by seeded emission (seeded-FELs), are attracting increasing attention because of the use of such light in probing high energy states of matter and their dynamics. While the experimental studies conducted so far have mainly concentrated on correlation functions, here we shift the focus towards reconstructing the distribution of the occupation numbers of the radiation energy states. In order to avoid the various drawbacks related to photon counting techni…
This paper discusses the potential for enhancing the capabilities of the European FEL in the soft X-ray regime. A high longitudinal coherence will be the key to such performance upgrade. In order to reach this goal we study a very compact soft X-ray self-seeding scheme originally designed at SLAC [1,2]. The scheme is based on a grating monochromator, and can be straightforwardly installed in the SASE3 undulator beamline at the European XFEL. For the European XFEL fully-coherent soft X-ray pulses are particularly valuable since they naturally support the extraction of more FEL power than at sat…
An important goal for any advanced X-ray FEL is an option for providing Fourier-limited X-ray pulses. In this way, no monochromator is needed in the experimental hall. Self-seeding is a promising approach to significantly narrow the SASE bandwidth to produce nearly transform-limited pulses. These are important for many experiments including 3D diffraction imaging. We discuss the implementation of a single-crystal self-seeding scheme in the hard X-ray lines of the European XFEL. For this facility, transform-limited pulses are particularly valuable since they naturally support the extraction of …
Typically, in Self-Amplified Spontaneous Emission Free Electron Laser (SASE FEL) based short-pulse schemes, pulse duration is limited by FEL coherence time. For hard X-ray FELs, coherence time is in a few hundred attosecond range while for XUV and soft X-ray FELs it is in the femtosecond regime. In this paper the modification of so-called chirp-taper scheme is developed that allows to overcome the coherence time barrier. Numerical simulations for XUV and soft X-ray FEL user facility FLASH demonstrate that one can generate a few hundred attosecond long pulses in the wavelength range 2 - 10 nm w…
Self-seeding schemes, consisting of two undulators with a monochromator in between, aim to reduce the bandwidth of SASE X-ray FELs. We recently proposed a new method of monochromatization exploiting a single crystal in Bragg-transmission geometry for self-seeding in the hard X-ray range. A straightforward extension is to use such kind of monochromator setup with two -or more- crystals arranged in a series to spectrally filter the SASE radiation at two closely-spaced wavelengths within the FEL gain band. This allows for the production of doublet -or multiplet- spectral lines. Applications invol…
Free-electron lasers (FELs) operate at wavelengths down to hard x-rays, and are either seeded or start from noise. There is increasing interest in x-ray FELs that rely on Self-Amplified Spontaneous Emission (SASE), and this involves increasing simulation activity in the design, optimization, and characterization of these x-ray FELs. Most of the simulation codes in use rely on the Slowly-Varying Envelope Approximation (SVEA) in which Maxwell's equations are averaged over the fast time scale resulting in relatively small computational requirements. While the SVEA codes are generally successful, …
We recently proposed a basic concept for design and layout of the undulator source for a dedicated bio-imaging beamline at the European XFEL. The goal of the optimized scheme proposed here is to enable experimental simplification and performance improvement. The core of the scheme is composed by soft and hard X-ray self-seeding setups. Based on the use of an improved design for both monochromators it is possible to increase the design electron energy up to 17.5 GeV in photon energy range between 2 keV and 13 keV, which is the most preferable for life science experiments. An advantage of operat…
Free-electron lasers (FELs) have been built ranging in wavelength from long-wavelength oscillators using partial wave guiding through ultraviolet through hard x-ray that are either seeded or start from noise (SASE). In addition, FELs that produce different polarizations of the output radiation ranging from linear through elliptic to circular polarization are currently under study. In this paper, we develop a three-dimensional, time-dependent formulation that is capable of modeling this large variety of FEL configurations including different polarizations. We employ a modal expansion for the op…
The baseline design of present XFEL projects only considers the production of a single photon beam at fixed wavelength from each baseline undulator. At variance, the scheme described in this paper considers the simultaneous production of high intensity SASE FEL radiation at three different wavelengths. We present a feasibility study of our scheme, and we make exemplifications with parameters of the baseline SASE2 line of the European XFEL operating in simultaneous mode at 0.05 nm, 0.15 nm and 0.4 nm. Our technique for generating the two colors at 0.05 nm and 0.15 nm is based in essence on a "f…
We describe a new method to produce intensity stable, highly coherent, narrow-band x-ray pulses in self-seeded free electron (FEL) lasers. The approach uses an ultra-short electron beam to generate a single spike FEL pulse with a wide coherent bandwidth. The self-seeding monochromator then notches out a narrow spectral region of this pulse to be amplified by a long portion of electron beam to full saturation. In contrast to typical self-seeding where monochromatization of noisy SASE pulses leads to either large intensity fluctuations or multiple frequencies, we show that this method produces a…
The simplest high gain free electron laser (FEL) amplifier concept is proposed. A klystron amplifier has the useful property that the various electronic processes take place in separate portions of the amplifier, rather than overlapping as in FEL amplifier with an uniform undulator. The klystron consists of two fundamental parts: succession of 2-3 cascades (modulator), and an output undulator (radiator) in which the modulated electron beam coherently radiates. Each cascade consists of uniform undulator and dispersion section. Unlike distributed optical klystrons, we have a high gain per cascad…
At the SASE-FEL user facilities FLASH and European XFEL, superconducting TESLA type cavities are used for acceleration of the driving electron bunches. The high achievable duty cycle allows for operating with long bunch trains, hence considerably increasing the efficiency of the machine. However, multibunch free electron lasers (FEL) operation requires longitudinal and transverse stability within the bunch train. The purpose of this work is to investigate the intra-bunch-train transverse dynamics at FLASH and European XFEL. Key relationships of superconducting rf cavity operation and the resul…
Free-electron lasers (FELs) have been built ranging in wavelength from long-wavelength oscillators using partial wave guiding through ultraviolet through hard x-ray FELs that are either seeded or start from noise (SASE). Operation in the x-ray spectrum has relied on single-pass SASE due either to the lack of seed lasers or difficulties in the design of x-ray mirrors. However, recent developments in the production of diamond crystal Bragg reflectors point the way to the design of regenerative amplifiers (RAFELs) which are, essentially, low-Q x-ray free-electron laser oscillators (XFELOs) that o…
A simple analysis is given for optimum length of undulator in self-seeding free electron laser (FEL). The obtained relations show the correlation between the undulator length and the system parameters. The power required for the seeding in the second part undulator and overall efficiency to monochromatizating the seeding settle on the length of the first part undulator; the magnitude of seeding power dominates the length of the second part undulator; the whole length of the undulators in self-seeding FEL is determined by the overall efficiency to get coherent seed, it is about half as long aga…
Modern x-ray free-electron lasers (XFELs) produce x-ray pulses of exceptional transverse coherence. This is due largely to the process of optical guiding by which the radiation is both refractively guided by the bunched electron beam and gain guided by the preferential amplification of on-axis radiation. These effects may be summarized by an effective index of refraction, which has been used in the past to study the transverse dynamics of the FEL process with significant simplifications and approximations, but never fully self-consistently. We present here a self-consistent method for studying…
We propose a technique for the production of attosecond X-ray pulses which is based on the use of X-ray SASE FEL combined with a femtosecond laser system. A few-cycle optical pulse from a Ti:sapphire laser interacts with the electron beam in a two-period undulator resonant to 800 nm wavelength and produces energy modulation within a slice of the electron bunch. Following the energy modulator the electron beam enters the X-ray undulator and produces SASE radiation. Due to energy modulation the frequency is correlated to the longitudinal position within the few-cycle-driven slice of SASE radiati…
The short wavelength and high peak power of the present generation of free-electron lasers (FELs) opens the possibility of ultra-short pulses even surpassing the present (tens to hundreds of attoseconds) capabilities of other light sources - but only if x-ray FELs can be made to generate pulses consisting of just a few optical cycles. For hard x-ray operation (~0.1nm), this corresponds to durations of approximately a single attosecond, and below into the zeptosecond scale. This talk will describe a novel method to generate trains of few-cycle pulses, at GW peak powers, from existing x-ray FEL …
The possibility of producing highly circularly polarized X-ray radiation, especially in the soft X-ray region, is an important asset at XFELs. However, the baseline of the European XFEL, including the soft X-ray SASE3 line, foresees planar undulators only. The lowest-risk strategy for implementing polarization control at SASE3 involves adding an APPLE II-type undulator at the end of the planar undulator, to exploit the microbunching from the baseline FEL. 5m-long APPLE II undulators are standard devices at synchrotrons. However, the choice of a short helical radiator leads to the problem of ba…
