longitudinal space charge assisted echo seeding of a free electron laser

Abstract

Seed lasers are employed to improve the temporal coherence of free-electron laser light. However, when seed pulses are short relative to the particle bunch, the noisy, temporally incoherent radiation from the un-seeded electrons can overwhelm the coherent, seeded radiation. In this paper a new seeding mechanism to improve the contrast between coherent and incoherent free electron laser radiation is employed together with a novel, simplified echo-seeding method. The concept relies on a combination of longitudinal space charge wakes and an echo-seeding technique to make a short, coherent pulse of FEL light together with noise background suppression. Several different simulation codes are used to illustrate the concept with conditions at the soft x-ray Free-electron LASer in Hamburg, FLASH. The impacts of coherent synchrotron radiation, intra beam scattering, and high peak current operation are investigated.