High-gain free-electron laser with orbital angular momentum seeded by an x-ray regenerative amplifier

Abstract

High-gain high-mode generation (HGHMG) free-electron laser has been experimentally confirmed to produce vortex light from a relativistic electron beam and is proposed to generate fully-coherent, high-brightness hard x-ray carrying orbital angular momentum at modern free electron laser facilities. However, this requires a coherent x-ray seed laser with sufficient power to perform the helical modulation on the electron beam. In this contribution, we propose a promising scheme to generate a fully coherent x-ray seed laser for the HGHMG system. In this scheme, an x-ray regenerative amplifier is used to offer a fully coherent x-ray seed laser to modulate the electron beam in a helical undulator. With the proposed technique, high-power and high-repetition-rate x-ray with orbital angular momentum can be produced, which will open routes to scientific research in x-ray science.