TUOAI02
ANL, Argonne, USA
SLAC, Menlo Park, California, USA
TISNCM, Troitsk, Russia
LBNL, Berkeley, California, USA
Elettra-Sincrotrone Trieste S.C.p.A., Basovizza, Italy
The Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) has produced extremely bright hard x-ray pulses using self-amplified spontaneous emission (SASE) since 2009. In SASE, the electron beam shot noise initiates the FEL gain, resulting in output radiation characterized by poor temporal coherence and a fluctuating spectrum whose normalized width is given by the FEL bandwidth. Recently, colleagues at DESY suggested a self-seeding scheme for the LCLS to reduce the bandwidth*. Here, the SASE produced in the first half of the undulator line is put through a simple diamond-based monochromator; the resulting monochromatic light trailing the main SASE pulse is used to seed the FEL interaction in the downstream undulators. We report on the experimental results implementing such a scheme at the LCLS, in which we have measured a reduction in bandwidth by a factor of 40-50 from that of SASE at 8-9 keV. The self-seeded FEL operates close to saturation, with the maximum output energy approximately equal to that with no seeding for low charge. The observed level of power fluctuations in the seeded output is presently rather large, and future plans focus on discovering their origins and reducing their magnitude.
* Geloni, V. Kocharyan ,and E.L. Saldin, DESY 10-133, arXiv:1008.3036 (2010)
SLAC, Menlo Park, California, USA
LBNL, Berkeley, California, USA
The complete design for self-seeding the LCLS at soft X-ray energies from 400 to 1000 eV based on a grating monochromator is described. The X-ray optics system consists of a toroidal variable-line-space (VLS) grating with a resolving power greater than 5000 for creating a nearly transform-limited seed pulse from the upstream SASE undulator for pulse durations of the order of 25 fs, and focusing mirrors for imaging the seed pulse onto the downstream seeding undulator. Diagnostics for ensuring overlap with the reentrant electron beam are included in the design. The optical system is sufficiently compact to fit within a single 3.4 m LCLS undulator segment. The electron chicane system which serves to delay the electron beam to match the less than 1 ps delay from the optical system is similar to the chicane used in the hard X-ray self-seeding at LCLS. The seeded FEL pulse is expected to be nearly transform-limited with a bandwidth in the 10-4 range, potentially increasing the low-charge FEL X-ray peak brightness by 1-2 orders of magnitude.