JASRI/SPring-8, Hyogo-ken
JAEA/Kansai, Kyoto
SOLEIL, Gif-sur-Yvette
RIKEN/SPring-8, Hyogo
The University of Tokyo, Tokyo
Keio University, Kanagawa-ken
RIKEN, Saitama
NTT Corp., Kanagawa-ken
KEK, Tsukuba
A seeded FEL is the most promised way to generate fully coherent radiation in a short-wavelength region. After the improvement of the laser and HHG system at the SCSS test accelerator, we have succeeded the amplification of the seed, for the first time, in the plateau region. The wavelength of the seed is 61.5 nm, which is the 13th harmonic of a Ti:Sa laser, and clear intensity increase and spectral narrowing by the FEL was observed. Although there still remains room for optimization of the transverse matching and synchronization of the seed, this result leads to realization of a fully coherent light source to users in VUV and soft x-ray regions.
RIKEN/SPring-8, Hyogo
JASRI/SPring-8, Hyogo-ken
To measure the femtosecond bunch length (10 - {10}00 fs) of the XFEL facility at SPring-8, we developed a coherent synchrotron radiation (CSR) monitor and a streak camera system. A pyro-electric detector was employed to measure the CSR intensity, since the CSR frequency region is THz or far infra-red. The CSR source is a dipole magnet of a chicane section. For the streak camera, we used Hamamatsu FESCA200, which has 200 fs resolution. The temporal structure of the optical transition radiation (OTR) from a metal mirror is observed by this camera. By using these monitors, the bunch length dependence was measured as a function of the rf phase of an S-band accelerator upstream of the bunch compressor at the SCSS test accelerator. A strong correlation between the CSR intensity and the S-band phase was observed. The CSR intensity was small at a debunching phase and the intensity increased as the rf phase was shifted to the bunching direction. Finally, it decreased in the over-bunching region. The bunch length data from the streak camera also had the same tendency. Thus, the bunch compression characteristics were appropriately measured and were consistent with our simulation results.
RIKEN/SPring-8, Hyogo
JASRI/SPring-8, Hyogo-ken
An 8-GeV C-band (5712 MHz) accelerator is employed as a main accelerator for XFEL/SPring-8. Since a C-band accelerating structure generates a high accelerating gradient of higher than 35 MV/m, the total length of the accelerator fits within 400 m, including the injector and three bunch compressors. We use 64 C-band rf units, which consist of 128 accelerating structures, 64 rf pulse compressors and waveguide components, 64 klystrons and modulators, etc. Mass-production of the C-band rf components has been done by several Japanese manufacturers. The components reliability has been improved during the production, and all the components finally have excellent quality. The production quality was also confirmed by a high power rf test. We achieved the accelerating gradient of 40 MV/m without any problem. Since XFEL realizes high bunch compression with precise control of the energy chirp, the rf should be quite stable. We developed a high precision high voltage charger combined with a low-noise klystron modulator. The pulse-to-pulse stability of the PFN voltage was less than 0.01%. Installation of the components started in August 2009 and was now almost completed on schedule.
RIKEN/SPring-8, Hyogo
JASRI/SPring-8, Hyogo-ken
A pump-probe experiment at XFEL/SPring-8 is one of the most prominent parts to extract the future of a coherent short-pulse X-ray laser. A commercial Ti:Sapphire mode-locked laser is presently used as a pump laser, while a probe laser is the XFEL. However, the time jitter of the commercial mode locked laser, as which is caused by the noise of an electrical mode-locking circuit, is around several hundred femto-seconds. This jitter value is not sufficient for a temporal resolution requirement of our pump-probe experiment with a laser pulse width of several ten femto-seconds. To improve this time jitter, the method, using a 770 nm Ti:Sapphire laser amplifiers directly triggered by a 1540 nm master optical oscillator as a time reference signal source for an XFEL accelerator, was devised. This method could eliminate the noise caused by the electrical mode-locking circuit. The basic principle of the method was proved by a preliminary experiment with laser pulse manipulation employing an E/O crystal shutter with a several ten ps response. This presentation describes a basic idea of this pump–probe method, a preliminary experiment set-up to check its feasibility, and experiment results.