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Title: Much Ado about Microbunching: Coherent Bunching in High Brightness Electron Beams

Thesis/Dissertation ·
DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/1043865· OSTI ID:1043865
 [1]
  1. Stanford Univ., CA (United States)

The push to provide ever brighter coherent radiation sources has led to the creation of correspondingly bright electron beams. With billions of electrons packed into normalized emittances (phase space) below one micron, collective effects may dominate both the preservation and use of such ultra-bright beams. An important class of collective effects is due to density modulations within the bunch, or microbunching. Microbunching may be deleterious, as in the case of the Microbunching Instability (MBI), or it may drive radiation sources of unprecedented intensity, as in the case of Free Electron Lasers (FELs). In this work we begin by describing models of microbunching due to inherent beam shot noise, which sparks both the MBI as well as SLAC's Linac Coherent Light Source, the world's first hard X-ray laser. We first use this model to propose a mechanism for reducing the inherent beam shot noise as well as for predicting MBI effects. We then describe experimental measurements of the resulting microbunching at LCLS, including optical radiation from the MBI, as well as the first gain length and harmonic measurements from a hard X-ray FEL. In the final chapters, we describe schemes that use external laser modulations to microbunch light sources of the future. In these sections we describe coherent light source schemes for both both linacs and storage rings.

Research Organization:
SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC)
DOE Contract Number:
AC02-76SF00515
OSTI ID:
1043865
Report Number(s):
SLAC-R-992; TRN: US1203376
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English