MAX-lab, Lund
The MAX-lab test FEL at MAX-lab, Lund, Sweden has during 2010 been commissioned and first results in Seeded Coherent Harmonic Generation up to the 6th harmonic (42 nm) in linear polarization and 4th harmonic (66 nm) in circular polarization of the 263 nm Ti:Sapphire seed laser achieved. The test FEL is a collaboration between MAX-lab and the Helmholtz Zentrum Berlin utilizing the 400 MeV linac injector at MAX-lab and an undulator set-up provided by HZB.
DESY, Hamburg
Wavelength range of high scientific interest refers to K- and L- absorption edges of magnetic elements which spans from 2.5 nm to 1.4 nm (500 - 900 eV). This wavelength range can be partially covered by SASE3 at the European XFEL, from 1.6 nm and down when operating at the nominal energy of 17.5 GeV. Operation at the reduced energy would allow to cover complete wavelength range of interest. Currently SASE3 is a planar device producing linearly polarized radiation. On the other hand, it is important to have circular polarization for experiments with magnetic samples. Solution of the problem of polarization is installation of an afterburner generating circularly polarized radiation. This can be helical afterburner or crossed-planar afterburner operating at the fundamental or double frequency. Here we present the results for a helical afterburner operating at the double frequency.
PSI, Villigen
DESY, Hamburg
Electro Optical (EO) sampling is a promising non-destructive method for measuring ultra short (sub picosecond) electron bunches. A prototype of a compact EO bunch length monitor system for the future SwissFEL facility was designed and built at PSI. Its core components are an optical setup including the electro optically active crystal and an Ytterbium fiber laser system which emits broadband pulses at 1050nm. The new monitoring system is described in detail and first experimental results from the SLS injector are presented.
JLAB, Newport News, Virginia
A sophisticated research device such as an advanced photo-cathode injector for a high energy accelerator-based X-ray light source requires drive lasers with a flat-top shape both in time and space in order to generate high-quality short electron beam bunches. There are a number of different ways to spatially shape laser beams, but the practical methods for temporal shaping, in particular in the picosecond or femtosecond regime, are quite limited. One simple way to shape laser pulses is pulse stacking by birefringent crystals. This method has been adopted for several applications. While the method itself has the great advantage of simplicity, the overall performance depends on many factors. In this paper, we will present both analysis and a recent experimental study about important pulse shaping characteristics that, to our knowledge, have not been adequately explored before. Evaluation on the pros and cons of the method and how to improve the overall performance will be discussed.
JASRI/SPring-8, Hyogo-ken
RIKEN/SPring-8, Hyogo
University of Tokyo, Tokyo
UTNL, Ibaraki
We developed a single-shot and non-destructive 3D bunch charge distribution (BCD) monitor based on Electro-Optical (EO) sampling with a manner of spectral decoding for XFEL/SPring-8. For the transverse detection, eight EO-crystals (Pockels effect) surround the beam axis azimuthally, and a linear-chirped probe laser pulse with a hollow shape passes through the EO-crystal. We plan to use an amorphous material which has only an even-order field dependence (Kerr effect) in donut shape without assembling eight conventional EO-crystals. The polarization axis of the probe laser should be radially distributed as well as the Coulomb field of the electron bunches. Since the signal intensity encoded at each crystal depends on the strength of the Coulomb field at each point, we can detect the transverse BCD. In the longitudinal detection, we use a prove laser with a broadband square spectrum (> 400 nm @ 800 nm) so that the temporal resolution is < 30 fs, if the pulse width of probe laser is 500 fs. In order to achieve 30-fs temporal resolution, we use an organic EO material, DAST crystal, which is transparent up to 30 THz. We report the first experimental results of our 3D-BCD monitor.
MAX-lab, Lund
Lund University, Division of Atomic Physics, Lund
Electro-optical spectral decoding was used to on-line monitor the arrival time of the electron bunches relative to the seed laser pulse at the test FEL facility at MAX-lab. An infrared chirped pulse coming from the seed laser is influenced by an electron bunch induced birefringence in a ZnTe birefringent crystal and the arrival time is determined from its spectrum. The possibility of running simultaneously with the FEL allowed for a feedback scheme to be built to compensate for the long term drifts in the system. Also, the whole system (the accelerator and the lasers) were synchronized to the power grid frequency. This lock increased the stability and was monitored by the EO setup. Measurements of the bunch length were performed and their correlation with arrival time pointed towards main contributors to the jitter in the system.
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 pumpprobe method, a preliminary experiment set-up to check its feasibility, and experiment results.
USTRAT/SUPA, Glasgow
DESY, Hamburg
So far, short wavelength Free Electron Laser amplifiers have produced linearly polarised radiation. For several important classes of experiment, variable polarisation is required. For example, in the wavelength range from 1.5 to 2.5 nm, light polarisation is important in characterising magnetic materials where measurements depend critically upon the handedness of the polarisation. It is therefore important that the polarisation does not fluctuate between measurements. In this paper, we study possible methods to generate variably polarised light and consider its shot-to-shot stability.
JASRI/SPring-8, Hyogo-ken
A laser-induced Schottky-effect-gated photocathode gun has been developed since 2006. This new type of gun utilizes a laser’s coherency to realize a compact laser source using Z-polarization of the IR laser on the cathode. This Z-polarization scheme reduces the laser pulse energy by reducing the cathode work function due to Schottky effect. A hollow laser incidence scheme is applied with a hollow convex lens that is focused after passing the beam through a radial polarizer. According to our calculations (convex lens: NA=0.15; 60-% hollow ratio), a Z-field of 1 GV/m needs 1.26 MW at peak power for the fundamental wavelength (792 nm). Therefore, we expect that this laser-induced Schottky emission requires just a compact femtosecond laser oscillator. We observed the first emission with a hollow laser incidence scheme (copper cathode illuminated by THG: 264 nm as a pilot experiment). The net charge of 21 pC with 100-fs laser pulse (pulse energy: 2.5 μJ; spot diameter: 200 μm). The maximum cathode surface field was 97 MV/m. This new scheme of gun will be investigated on several metal photocathode materials by comparing radial and azimuthal polarizations at 264, 396,792 nm.