Diamond, Oxfordshire
STFC/DL/ASTeC, Daresbury, Warrington, Cheshire
LBNL, Berkeley, California
The New Light Source (NLS) project was launched in April 2008 by the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) to consider the scientific case and develop a conceptual design for a possible next generation light source based on a combination of advanced conventional laser and free-electron laser sources. In this paper we present the results of the optimisation of a single pass superconducting LINAC as a driver for the the NLS FELs. The optimisation process requires the analysis of complicated electron beam dynamics in the presence of CSR, wakefields and space charge and has specifically taken into account the requirements for FEL operation in a seeded harmonic cascade scheme.
Diamond, Oxfordshire
We discuss the possible operation of the UK New Light Source in the single spike regime with photon energies ranging from 50 eV to 1 keV. The optimisation process of the beam dynamics in the single spike regime is outlined and we present the results of full start-to-end simulations to show that few-fs to sub-fs pulses can be obtained, depending on the photon energy, with interesting power level. The analysis of the jitter of the SASE output characteristic is also reported.
STFC/DL/ASTeC, Daresbury, Warrington, Cheshire
JAI, Oxford
Cockcroft Institute, Warrington, Cheshire
We describe a design for a two-pass recirculating 1.3 GHz superconducting linac as a driver for the suite of free-electron lasers proposed in the UK New Light Source project. The machine will deliver longitudinally compressed electron bunches with repetition rates of 1 kHz with an initial upgrade path to increase this to 1 MHz. A modular philosophy is employed to separate beam injection and extraction from a three stage compression scheme. Results show that the necessary high peak currents can be achieved whilst preserving beam quality.