Stability Analysis of the Laser System for the TTF Photoinjector at Fermilab

A solid-state laser system that produces a 1MHz pulse train of 800 pulses with 18 mJ per pulse at the wavelength of 263.5 nm has been developed to meet the requirements of the TESLA Test Facility (TTF) at Fermilab and in operation since 1998.[1,2] Besides the production of high charges, high brightness electron beams, the need for high bunch charge stability requires that each laser pulse in the pulse train must have the same energy, and the energy per laser pulse should not vary significantly from shot to shot. This motivates the stability analysis of the laser system for the TTF photoinjector

Maximizing Spectral Flux from Self-Seeding Hard X-ray FELs

Fully coherent x-rays can be generated by self-seeding x-ray free-electron lasers (XFELs). Self-seeding by a forward Bragg diffraction (FBD) monochromator has been recently proposed [1] and demonstrated [2]. Characteristic time To of FBD determines the power, spectral, and time characteristics of the FBD seed [3]. Here we show that for a given electron bunch with duration sigma_e the spectral flux of the self-seeding XFEL can be maximized, and the spectral bandwidth can be respectively minimized by choosing To ~ sigma_e/pi and by optimizing the electron bunch delay tau_e. The choices of To and tau_e are not unique. In all cases, the maximum value of the spectral flux and the minimum bandwidth are primarily determined by sigma_e. Two-color seeding takes place To >> sigma_e/\pi. The studies are performed, for a Gaussian electron bunch distribution with the parameters, close to those used in the short-bunch (sigma_e ~ 5 fs) and long-bunch (sigma_e ~ 20 fs) operation modes of the LCLS XFEL