High-energy radiation can be generated by colliding a relativistic electron bunch with a high-intensity laser pulse—a process known as Thomson scattering. In the nonlinear regime the emitted radiation contains harmonics. For a laser pulse whose length is comparable to its wavelength, the carrier envelope phase changes the behavior of the motion of the electron and therefore the radiation spectrum. Here we show theoretically and numerically the dependency of the spectrum on the intensity of the laser and the carrier envelope phase. Additionally, we also discuss what experimental parameters are required to measure the effects for a beamed pulse.
We discuss the effect of radiation friction and quantum recoil on the parameters of a gamma comb with narrow spectral peaks, arising when use is made of laser pulses with time-dependent polarisation, which reduces significantly the ponderomotive broadening of harmonics. A detailed numerical study of the contribution of the electron beam nonideality to the observability of the effect is presented.
In nonlinear Thomson scattering, the main emission line and its harmonics form a band-like structure due to the laser pulse shape induced ponderomotive broadening. We propose to use tapered undulators to mimic Thomson scattering and measure the intensity-dependent electron mass shift experimentally. We also numerically show that the effect is observable for realistic electron beams like in DESY or SKIF.
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