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Fresh-slice multicolour X-ray free-electron lasers

Nature Photonics volume 10, pages 745–750 (2016)Cite this article

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Abstract

X-ray free-electron lasers (XFELs) provide femtosecond X-ray pulses with a narrow energy bandwidth and unprecedented brightness. Ultrafast physical and chemical dynamics, initiated with a site-specific X-ray pulse, can be explored using XFELs with a second ultrashort X-ray probe pulse. However, existing double-pulse schemes are complicated, difficult to customize or provide only low-intensity pulses. Here we present the novel fresh-slice technique for multicolour pulse production, wherein different temporal slices of an electron bunch lase to saturation in separate undulator sections. This method combines electron bunch tailoring from a passive wakefield device with trajectory control to provide multicolour pulses. The fresh-slice scheme outperforms existing techniques at soft X-ray wavelengths. It produces femtosecond pulses with a power of tens of gigawatts and flexible colour separation. The pulse delay can be varied from temporal overlap to almost one picosecond. We also demonstrate the first three-colour XFEL and variably polarized two-colour pulses.

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Figure 1: Fresh-slice multipulse scheme.
Figure 2: Fresh-slice two-colour single shots at 707 eV.
Figure 3: Demonstration of the fresh-slice two-colour FEL at 640 eV.
Figure 4: Polarization control of the probe pulse.
Figure 5: Demonstration of the fresh-slice three-colour XFEL at 780 eV.

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Acknowledgements

We thank K. Bane and R. Iverson for useful discussions and support. This work was supported by Department of Energy contract nos DE-AC02-76SF00515 and DE-SC0012376.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, 2575 Sand Hill Road, Menlo Park, 94025, California, USA

    Alberto A. Lutman, Timothy J. Maxwell, James P. MacArthur, Marc W. Guetg, Ryan N. Coffee, Yuantao Ding, Zhirong Huang, Agostino Marinelli, Stefan Moeller & Johann C. U. Zemella

  2. Physics Department, University of Connecticut, Storrs, 06269, Connecticut, USA

    Nora Berrah

  3. Stanford PULSE Institute, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, 2575 Sand Hill Road, Menlo Park, 94025, Calfornia, USA

    Ryan N. Coffee & Zhirong Huang

  4. Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY, Notkestrasse 85, Hamburg, 22607, Germany

    Johann C. U. Zemella

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  1. Alberto A. Lutman
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Contributions

A.A.L., J.P.M and R.N.C co-wrote the manuscript with input from all co-authors. A.A.L conceived the fresh-slice schemes with the dechirper. A.A.L., T.J.M., J.P.M., M.W.G., N.B., R.N.C., Y.D., Z.H., A.M., S.M. and J.C.U.Z. participated in the experiments.

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Correspondence to Alberto A. Lutman.

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Lutman, A., Maxwell, T., MacArthur, J. et al. Fresh-slice multicolour X-ray free-electron lasers. Nature Photon 10, 745–750 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2016.201

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