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
The Alignment Diagnostic System (ADS) of the LCLS undulator system indicates that the 33 undulator quadrupoles have an extremely high position stability over many weeks. However, beam trajectory straightness and lasing efficiency degrade more quickly than this. A lengthy Beam Based Alignment (BBA) procedure must be executed every two to four weeks to re-optimize the X-ray beam parameters. The undulator system includes RF cavity Beam Position Monitors (RFBPMs), several of which are utilized by an automatic feedback system to align the incoming electron-beam trajectory to the undulator axis. The beam trajectory straightness degradation has been traced to electronic drifts of the gain and offset of the BPMs used in the beam feedback system. To quickly recover the trajectory straightness, we have developed a fast beam-based procedure to recalibrate the BPMs. This procedure takes advantage of the high-precision monitoring capability of the ADS, which allows highly repeatable positioning of undulator quadrupoles. This report describes the ADS, the position stability of the LCLS undulator quadrupoles, and some results of the new recovery procedure.