ANL, Argonne
X-ray free electron lasers (FELs) are well suited to pursue a long-standing goal of studying matter in a transient state that is far from equilibrium. This state often determines the functions of materials and, thus, holds a key to understanding how to control them. The natural time scale for most of the dynamic processes involving atoms is of the order of 100 femtoseconds, and existing x-ray FELs have already surpassed this mark. The natural time scale for dynamic processes driven by electrons is of the order of 100 attoseconds, and this is the next Rubicon for FELs. In this talk I will review the state of the art in generation of femtosecond x-ray pulses using FELs and will discuss a number of new ideas en route to sub-femtosecond x-ray pulses.
DESY, Hamburg
The Free Electron Laser in Hamburg (FLASH) is a SASE FEL user facility and in addition serves as a prototype for the European XFEL. The recent upgrade of FLASH with a higher harmonic RF module opens a new possibility for ultra-short low charge operation. The advantage of small transverse emittance at low charges can be used only with strong, linearized bunch compression. At this report we consider simulations of the beam dynamics at low charges and estimate the expected properties of the radiation at FLASH and the European XFEL. We present first experimental results at FLASH.
SLAC, Menlo Park, California
There is a growing interest in the generation and characterization of femtosecond and sub-femtosecond pulses from linac-based free-electron lasers (FELs). In this paper we study a simple longitudinal transformation* for measuring a very short electron bunch. We show that this method can be applied in a straightforward manner at x-ray FEL facilities such as the Linac Coherent Light Source by slightly adjusting the second bunch compressor followed by running the bunch on an rf zero-crossing phase of the final linac. After taking into account the linac wakefield, we find the condition under which the final beam energy spread corresponds directly to the compressed bunch length. When used in conjunction with a high-resolution electron spectrometer, this method potentially reveals temporal information of femtosecond and sub-femtosecond electron bunches used by such FELs.
* K. Ricci and T. Smith, Phys. Rev. ST-AB 3, 032801 (2000).
ELETTRA, Basovizza
University of Nova Gorica, Nova Gorica
FERMI@Elettra will have two different seeded FELs for covering the spectral range between 80 and 4nm. The shorter wavelength FEL, namely FEL-2, will cover the spectral range between 20 and 4 nm, and will be based on a double cascade high gain harmonic generation scheme. Moreover, the system has been designed to allow the implementation of other seeding schemes, like seeding with high-order harmonics generated in gas and echo-enhanced harmonic generation (EEG). In this work, we present the studies on the possible implementation on FERMI of the EEHG, reporting about the expected performance. The number of photons per pulse and the FEL bandwidth are calculated by means of time dependent start-to- end simulations.