• O. Grimm, H. Delsim-Hashemi, L. Fröhlich
  DESY, Hamburg
• E. Chiadroni
  Universita di Roma II Tor Vergata, Roma

Various activities at the TTF linear accelerator at DESY, Hamburg, that drives the VUV-FEL are geared towards measuring the longitudinal charge distribution of electron bunches with coherent far-infrared radiation. Examples are beam lines transporting synchrotron or transition radiation to interferometers mounted inside or outside the tunnel, and studies of single-shot grating spectrometers. All such approaches require a good understanding of the radiation generation and transport mechanism and of the detector characteristics to extract useful information on the charge distribution. Simulations and measurements of the expected transverse intensity distribution and polarization of synchrotron radiation emitted at the first bunch compressor of TTF have been performed. The transverse intensity scanning provided for the first time at DESY a visual image of the footprint of terahertz radiation. Detector response measurements have been performed at the FELIX facility, Netherlands, for wavelengths between 100-160 microns, and first studies with blackbody radiation and band pass filters in the terahertz regime have been done at PTB, Berlin. The paper will summarize these results.

• G. Geloni, E. Saldin, E. Schneidmiller, M.V. Yurkov
  DESY, Hamburg

Nonlinear generation of coherent harmonic radiation is an important option in the operation of a X-ray FEL facility since it broadens the spectral range of the facility itself, thus allowing for a wider scope of experimental applications. We found that up-to-date theoretical understanding of second harmonic generation is incorrect. Derivation of correct radiation characteristics will follow our criticism.

• B. Steffen, S. Casalbuoni, E.-A. Knabbe, B. Schmidt
  DESY, Hamburg
• P. Schmuser, A. Winter
  Uni HH, Hamburg

For the operation of a SASE FEL, the longitudinal bunch profile is one of the most critical parameters. At the superconducting linac of the VUV-FEL at DESY, we have installed an electro optic spectral decoding (EOSD) experiment to probe the time structure of the electric field of the bunches to better than 200 fs rms. The field induced birefringence of a ZnTe crystal is detected by a 30 femtosecond laser pulse (TiSa) and the time structure is measured by encoding it on the spectrum of the chirped TiSa pulse. First results on jitter measurements and for the bunch length as function of the linac parameters are presented.