Commissioning of the Delta Polarizing Undulator at LCLS
The Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) generates linearly polarized, intense, high-brightness x-ray pulses from planar fixed-gap undulators. While the fixed-gap design supports a very successful and tightly controlled alignment concept, it provides only limited taper capability (up to 1% through canted pole and horizontal position adjustability) and lacks polarization control. The latter is of great importance for soft x-ray experiments. A new 3.2-m-long compact undulator (based on the Cornell University Delta design) has been developed and installed in place of the last LCLS undulator segment (U33) in October 2014. This undulator provides full control of the polarization degree and K value. Used on its own, it produces fully polarized radiation in the selected state (linear, circular or elliptical) but at low intensity. To increase the output power by orders of magnitude, the electron beam is micro-bunched by several (~10) of the upstream LCLS undulator segments operated in the linear FEL regime. As unavoidable by-product, this microbunching process produces moderate amounts of horizontally linear polarized radiation which mixes with the radiation produced by the Delta undulator. This unwanted radiation component has been greatly reduced by the reverse taper configuration, as suggested by E. Schneidmiller and M. Yurkov. Full elimination of the linear polarized component was achieved through spatial separation combined with transverse collimation. The paper describes these and other methods tested during commissioning. It also presents results of polarization measurements showing high degrees of circular polarization in the soft x-ray wavelength range (500 eV - 1500 eV).
- Research Organization:
- SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC02-76SF00515
- OSTI ID:
- 1221585
- Report Number(s):
- SLAC-PUB-16404
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: Invited37th International Free Electron Laser Conference (FEL2015), Daejeon, South Korea, 8/23/2015-8/28/2015
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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