• E. Hemsing, A. Marinelli, J.B. Rosenzweig
  UCLA, Los Angeles, California

A simple scheme to generate intense light with orbital angular momentum in an FEL is described. The light is generated from a helically pre-bunched beam created in an upstream modulator. The beam energy is tuned to maximize gain in the higher-order mode which reaches saturation well before the spontaneous modes driven by noise are amplified.

• J.B. Rosenzweig, G. Andonian, A. Fukasawa, E. Hemsing, G. Marcus, A. Marinelli, P. Musumeci, B.D. O'Shea, F.H. O'Shea, C. Pellegrini, D. Schiller, G. Travish
  UCLA, Los Angeles, California
• P.H. Bucksbaum, M.J. Hogan, P. Krejcik
  SLAC, Menlo Park, California
• M. Ferrario
  INFN/LNF, Frascati (Roma)
• S.J. Full
  Penn State University, University Park, Pennsylvania
• P. Muggli
  USC, Los Angeles, California

Recent initiatives at UCLA concerning ultra-short, GeV electron beam generation have been aimed at achieving sub-fs pulses capable of driving X-ray free-electron lasers (FELs) in single-spike mode. This uses of very low charge beams, which may allow existing FEL injectors to produce few-100 attosecond pulses, with very high brightness. Towards this end, recent experiments at the Stanford X-ray FEL (LCLS, first of its kind, built with essential UCLA leadership) have produced ~2 fs, 20 pC electron pulses. We discuss here extensions of this work, in which we seek to exploit the beam brightness in FELs, in tandem with new developments at UCLA in cryogenic undulator technology, to create compact accelerator/undulator systems that can lase below 0.15 Angstroms, or be used to permit 1.5 Angstrom operation at 4.5 GeV. In addition, we are now developing experiments which use the present LCLS fs pulses to excite plasma wakefields exceeding 1 TV/m, permitting a table-top TeV accelerator for frontier high energy physics applications.