FEL/Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, USA
TUNL, Durham, North Carolina, USA
Laser Zentrum Hannover, Hannover, Germany
In this paper we report extension of the operational energy of the gamma ray beams produced at Duke High Intensity Gamma-ray Source (HIGS) up to ~120MeV, opening up a new high energy region of gamma rays for photonuclear physics research. This achievement is based upon development of radiation robust, thermally stable, high-reflectivity fluoride (LaF3/MgF2) multilayer VUV FEL mirrors, enabling us to maintain stable high intensity FEL lasing at the wavelengths of around 175nm. We discuss the challenges of HIGS operation at high gamma and high electron beam energies with the downstream FEL mirror exposed to extremely hush radiation. The experience of the first HIGS user operation with high intensity, high gamma-ray beam energies (85 and ~120MeV) using these new mirrors is also discussed.
FEL/Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, USA
The accelerator and light source research program at Duke Free-Electron Laser Laboratory (DFELL), TUNL, is focused on the development of the storage ring based free-electron lasers (FELs) and a state-of-the-art Compton gamma-ray source, the High Intensity Gamma-ray Source (HIGS) driven by the storage ring FEL. With a maximum total flux of about 3·1010 gamma/s and a spectral flux of more than 1,000 gamma/s/eV around 10 MeV, the HIGS is the world’s highest-flux Compton gamma-ray source. Operated in the energy range from 1 to 100 MeV, the HIGS is a premier Compton gamma-ray facility in the world for a variety of nuclear physics research programs, both fundamental and applied. In this work, we will describe our recent light source development to enable the production of gamma rays in the higher energy range from 100 and 120 MeV. We will also provide a summary of our recent accelerator physics and FEL physics research activities.
FEL/Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, USA
Laser beams from an optical cavity, such as free-electron laser (FEL) resonators, are typically a mixture of the cavity’s eigenmodes, such as the Hermite-Gaussian (HG) modes or Laguerre-Gaussian (LG) modes. Robust evaluation of the eigenmode spectrum of a multimode laser beam has various applications in laser development, research, and utilization. In this work, a general eigenmode decomposition method for a multimode laser beam has been developed based on Bayesian analysis. This problem is transformed into a linear system and then solved using a Gaussian probabilistic model. Using Bayesian analysis, prior knowledge about the mode content is further incorporated into the solution to improve the results for laser beams contaminated with complex disturbances. The decomposition of the beam image from the incoherent intensity addition of HG modes is discussed with different types of noise or disturbances. The simulation results have been used to show the robustness of this method. This method can be straightforwardly extended into other cases such as the wavefront decomposition into the coherent superposition of HG and LG modes.
FEL/Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, USA
To enable reliable measurements of the small vertical size of the electron beam in the Duke storage ring, a measurement system is being developed using synchrotron radiation interferometry (SRI). By relating the transverse beam size to the transverse spatial coherence of synchrotron radiation from a dipole magnet according to the Van Cittert-Zernike theorem, the transverse beam size can be inferred by recording and fitting the interference fringe as a function of the characteristic features of the interference filter used. In this paper, we describe the preliminary design of such a measurement system and present design considerations to make it possible to measure the electron beam vertical size for a wide range of electron beam energies and currents. Especially this system will be optimized to measure the electron beam size for low current operation down to 50 to 100~μA. This beam size measurement system will be used as an important beam diagnostic for the intrabeam scattering research at the Duke storage ring.