Ultrashort flashes of THz light with low photon energies of a few meV, but strong electric or magnetic field transients have recently been employed to prepare various fascinating nonequilibrium states in matter. Here we present a new class of sources based on superradiant enhancement of radiation from relativistic electron bunches in a compact electron accelerator that we believe will revolutionize experiments in this field. Our prototype source generates high-field THz pulses at unprecedented quasi-continuous-wave repetition rates up to the MHz regime. We demonstrate parameters that exceed state-of-the-art laser-based sources by more than 2 orders of magnitude. The peak fields and the repetition rates are highly scalable and once fully operational this type of sources will routinely provide 1 MV/cm electric fields and 0.3 T magnetic fields at repetition rates of few 100 kHz. We benchmark the unique properties by performing a resonant coherent THz control experiment with few 10 fs resolution.
The success of most of the proposed energy recovery linac (ERL) based electron accelerator projects for future storage ring replacements (SRR) and high power IR-free-electron lasers (FELs) largely depends on the development of an appropriate source. For example, to meet the FEL specifications [J. W. Lewellen, Proc. SPIE Int. Soc. Opt. Eng. 5534, 22 (2004)] electron beams with an unprecedented combination of high brightness, low emittance (0:1 mrad), and high average current (hundreds of mA) are required. An elegant way to create a beam of such quality is to combine the high beam quality of a normal conducting rf photoinjector with the superconducting technology, i.e., to build a superconducting rf photoinjector (SRF gun). SRF gun R&D programs based on different approaches have been launched at a growing number of institutes and companies (AES, Beijing University, BESSY, BNL, DESY, FZD, TJNAF, Niowave, NPS, Wisconsin University). Substantial progress was achieved in recent years and the first long term operation was demonstrated at FZD [R. Xiang et al., in
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