• B. Hong, R. Akre, V. Pacak
  SLAC, Menlo Park, California

The Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) at SLAC is in full user operation and has met the stability goals for stable lasing. The 250pC bunch can be compressed to below 100fS before passing through an undulator. In a new mode of operation a 20pC bunch is compressed to what is believed to be about 10fS. Experimenters are regularly using this shorter X-ray pulse and getting pristine data. The 10fS bunch has timing jitter on the order of 100fS. Physicists are requesting that the RF system achieve better stability to reduce timing jitter. Drifts in the RF system require longitudinal feedbacks to work over large ranges and errors result in reduced performance of the LCLS. This paper describes the new RF system being designed to help diagnose and reduce jitter and drift in the SLAC linac.

• F.-J. Decker, R. Akre, A. Brachmann, J. Craft, Y.T. Ding, D. Dowell, P. Emma, J.C. Frisch, Z. Huang, R.H. Iverson, A. Krasnykh, H. Loos, H.-D. Nuhn, D.F. Ratner, T.J. Smith, J.L. Turner, J.J. Welch, W.E. White, J. Wu
  SLAC, Menlo Park, California

The Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) at SLAC is an x-ray Free Electron Laser with wavelengths of 0.15 nm to 1.5 nm. The electron beam stability is important for good lasing. While the transverse jitter of the beam is about 10-20% of the rms beam sizes, the jitter in the longitudinal phase space is a multiple of the energy spread and bunch length. At the lower energy of 4.3 GeV (corresponding to the longest wavelength of 1.5 nm) the relative energy jitter can be 0.125%, while the rms energy spread is with 0.025% five times smaller. An even bigger ratio exists for the arrival time jitter of 50 fs and the bunch duration of about 5 fs (rms) in the low charge (20 pC) operating mode. Although the impact to the experiments is reduced by providing pulse-by-pulse data of the measured energy and arrival time, it would be nice to understand and mitigate the root causes of this jitter. The thyratron of the high power supply of the RF klystrons is one of the main contributors. Another suspect is the multi-pacting in the RF loads. Phase measurements down to 0.01 degree (equals 10 fs) along the RF pulse were achieved, giving hints to the impact of the different sources.