We propose and demonstrate a Terahertz (THz) oscilloscope for recording time information of an ultrashort electron beam. By injecting a laser-driven THz pulse with circular polarization into a dielectric tube, the electron beam is swept helically such that the time information is uniformly encoded into the angular distribution that allows one to characterize both the temporal profile and timing jitter of an electron beam. The dynamic range of the measurement in such a configuration is significantly increased compared to deflection with a linearly polarized THz pulse. With this THz oscilloscope, nearly 50-fold longitudinal compression of a relativistic electron beam to about 15 fs (rms) is directly visualized with its arrival time determined with 3 fs accuracy. This technique bridges the gap between streaking of photoelectrons with optical lasers and deflection of relativistic electron beams with radio-frequency deflectors, and should have wide applications in many ultrashort electron beam based facilities.The ability to characterize the time information of an ultrashort electron beam including both the temporal profile and arrival time is crucial for optimizing and enhancing the performance of many electron beam based scientific facilities such as free-electron lasers (FELs [1-3]), ultrafast electron diffraction (UED [4,5]) and microscopy (UEM [6-9]), laser-driven and beam-driven advanced accelerators [10-15], etc. In accelerator community, radio-frequency (rf) deflecting cavities have been widely used to measure the temporal profile of relativistic electron beams with energy ranging from MeV to GeV (see, e.g. [16][17][18]). However, the information of beam arrival time with respect to an external laser as required in a pump-probe experiment can not be directly measured with an rf deflector. In attosecond science community, streaking of photoelectrons with optical lasers has become a standard technique for characterizing the complete information of attosecond pulses [19]. Recently, this technique has been adapted to characterize femtosecond x-ray pulses in FELs with the streaking imprinted by farinfrared and THz pulses [20][21][22][23]. However, this technique doesn't apply to a relativistic electron beam, as dictated by Lawson-Woodward theorem [24]. Very recently, THz streaking of keV and MeV electrons [25][26][27] in a sub-wavelength metallic structure has been used to measure both the temporal profile and arrival time of electron beams. However, the small aperture used to enhance THz field may significantly limit the number of useful electrons. Furthermore, with the streaking imprinted by a linearly polarized THz pulse, the beam receives sinusoidal angular streaking and thus the measurement has a rather limited dynamic range (time window where the measurement is accurate) comparable to about one quarter of the wavelength.In this Letter, we demonstrate a laser-driven THz oscilloscope that allows one to record the complete time information of an ultrashort electron beam with both large dynamic range and high tem...

We have measured an intense THz radiation produced by a sub-picosecond, relativistic electron bunch in a dielectric loaded waveguide. For efficient THz pulse extraction, the dielectric loaded waveguide end was cut at an angle. For an appropriate choice of angle cut, such antenna converts the TM 01 mode excited in the waveguide into a free-space fundamental Gauss-Hermite mode propagating at an angle with respect to the electron beam trajectory. Simulations show that more than 95% of energy can be extracted using such a simple approach. More than 40 oscillations of about 170 ps long 0.48 THz signal were explicitly measured with an interferometer and 10 lJ of energy per pulse, as determined with a calorimetric energy meter, were delivered outside the electron beamline to an area suitable for THz experiments.

No abstract

The most severe problem of the international linear collider (ILC-type) is its high cost, resulting in part from the enormous length of the collider. This length is determined mainly by the achievable accelerating gradient in the RF system of the collider. In current technology, the maximum acceleration gradient in superconducting (SC) structures is determined mainly by the value of the surface RF magnetic field. In order to increase the gradient, a superconducting traveling wave accelerating (STWA) structure is suggested. Utilization of STWA structure with small phase advance per cell for future high energy linear colliders such as ILCs may provide an accelerating gradient 1.2–1.4 times larger [] than a standing wave structure. However, STWA structure requires a feedback waveguide for power redirecting from the end of the structure back to the front end of accelerating structure. Recent tests of a 1.3 GHz model of a single-cell cavity with waveguide feedback demonstrated an accelerating gradient comparable to the gradient of a single-cell ILC-type cavity from the same manufacturer []. In the present paper, high gradient test results are presented.

No abstract