STATUS OF THE FIBER LINK STABILIZATION UNITS AT FLASH

Abstract State-of-the-art X-ray photon science with modern freeelectron lasers (FEL) like FLASH (free-electron laser in Hamburg) and the upcoming European X-ray Free-Electron Laser Facility (XFEL) requires timing with femtosecond accuracy. For this purpose a sophisticated pulsed optical synchronization system distributes precise timing via lengthstabilized fiber links throughout the entire FEL. Stations to be synchronized comprise bunch arrival time monitors (BAM's), RF stations and optical cross-correlators (OXC) for external lasers. The different requirements of all those stations have to be met by one optical link stabilization unit (LSU) design, compensating drifts and jitter in the distribution system down to a fs-level. Five years of LSU operation at FLASH have led to numerous enhancements resulting in an elaborate system. This paper presents these enhancements, their impact on synchronization performance and the latest state of the LSUs

Jitter-correction for IR/UV-XUV pump-probe experiments at the FLASH free-electron laser

Citation: Savelyev, E., Boll, R., Bomme, C., Schirmel, N., Redlin, H., Erk, B., . . . Rolles, D. (2017). Jitter-correction for IR/UV-XUV pump-probe experiments at the FLASH free-electron laser. New Journal of Physics, 19, 13. doi:10.1088/1367-2630/aa652dIn pump-probe experiments employing a free-electron laser (FEL) in combination with a synchronized optical femtosecond laser, the arrival-time jitter between the FEL pulse and the optical laser pulse often severely limits the temporal resolution that can be achieved. Here, we present a pump-probe experiment on the UV-induced dissociation of 2,6-difluoroiodobenzene (C6H3F2I) molecules performed at the FLASH FEL that takes advantage of recent upgrades of the FLASH timing and synchronization system to obtain high-quality data that are not limited by the FEL arrival-time jitter. Wediscuss in detail the necessary data analysis steps and describe the origin of the timedependent effects in the yields and kinetic energies of the fragment ions that we observe in the experiment

Charge induced chemical dynamics in glycine probed with time resolved Auger electron spectroscopy

In the present contribution, we use x rays to monitor charge induced chemical dynamics in the photoionized amino acid glycine with femtosecond time resolution. The outgoing photoelectron leaves behind the cation in a coherent superposition of quantum mechanical eigenstates. Delayed x ray pulses track the induced coherence through resonant x ray absorption that induces Auger decay. Temporal modulation of the Auger electron signal correlated with specific ions is observed, which is governed by the initial electronic coherence and subsequent vibronic coupling to nuclear degrees of freedom. In the time resolved x ray absorption measurement, we monitor the time frequency spectra of the resulting many body quantum wave packets for a period of 175 fs along different reaction coordinates. Our experiment proves that by measuring specific fragments associated with the glycine dication as a function of the pump probe delay, one can selectively probe electronic coherences at early times associated with a few distinguishable components of the broad electronic wave packet created initially by the pump pulse in the cation. The corresponding coherent superpositions formed by subsets of electronic eigenstates and evolving along parallel dynamical pathways show different phases and time periods in the range of amp; 8722;0.3 0.1 amp; 120587; amp; 8804; amp; 120601; amp; 8804; 0.1 0.2 amp; 120587; and 18.2 1.7 amp; 8722;1.4 amp; 8804; amp; 119879; amp; 8804;23.9 1.2 amp; 8722;1.1 fs. Furthermore, for long delays, the data allow us to pinpoint the driving vibrational modes of chemical dynamics mediating charge induced bond cleavage along different reaction coordinate

Auger electron wave packet interferometry on extreme timescales with coherent soft x rays

Wave packet interferometry provides benchmark information on light-induced electronic quantum states by monitoring their relative amplitudes and phases during coherent excitation, propagation,and decay. The relative phase control of soft x-ray pulse replicas on the single-digit attosecond timescale achieved in our experiments makes this method a powerful tool to probe ultrafast quantum phenomena such as the excitation of Auger shake-up states with sub-cycle precision. In this contribution we present first results obtained for different Auger decay channels upon generating L-shell vacancies in argon atoms using Michelson-type all-reflective interferometric autocorrelation at a central free-electron laser photon energy of 274.7 eV

Mixed Diagnostics for Longitudinal Properties of Electron Bunches in a Free-Electron Laser

Longitudinal properties of electron bunches are critical for the performance of a wide range of scientific facilities. In a free-electron laser, for example, the existing diagnostics only provide very limited longitudinal information of the electron bunch during online tuning and optimization. We leverage the power of artificial intelligence to build a neural network model using experimental data, in order to bring the destructive longitudinal phase space (LPS) diagnostics online virtually and improve the existing current profile online diagnostics which uses a coherent transition radiation (CTR) spectrometer. The model can also serve as a digital twin of the real machine on which algorithms can be tested efficiently and effectively. We demonstrate at the FLASH facility that the encoder-decoder model with more than one decoder can make highly accurate predictions of megapixel LPS images and coherent transition radiation spectra concurrently for electron bunches in a bunch train with broad ranges of LPS shapes and peak currents, which are obtained by scanning all the major control knobs for LPS manipulation. Furthermore, we propose a way to significantly improve the CTR spectrometer online measurement by combining the predicted and measured spectra. Our work showcases how to combine virtual and real diagnostics in order to provide heterogeneous and reliable mixed diagnostics for scientific facilities

Concept of a Novel High-Bandwidth Arrival Time Monitor for Very Low Charges as a Part of the All-Optical Synchronization System at ELBE

Numerous advanced applications of X-ray free-electron lasers require pulse durations and time resolutions in the order of only a few femtoseconds or better. The generation of these pulses to be used in time-resolved experiments require synchronization techniques that can simultaneously lock all necessary components to a precision in the range of a few fs only. The CW operated electron accelerator ELBE at the Helmholtzzentrum Dresden Rossendorf uses a all-optical synchronization system to ensure a timing stability on the few 10 fs scale. ELBE requires a minimum beam pipe diameter of 43mm that limits the achievable output voltage of the pickup structure to drive the attached electro-optical modulator. This contribution presents a concept for a novel high-bandwidth arrival time monitor with sufficient output signal for the attached EOMs for very low charges as a part of the all-optical synchronization system at ELBE

Direct-Sampling Coarse Bunch Arrival Time Monitor in the Free Electron Laser FLASH Based on the Fast Digitizer Implemented in the FMC VITA 57.1 Standard

At the free-electron lasers FLASH and European-XFEL bunch arrival times are monitored with a high-accuracy electro-optical based data acquisition system (BAM). Due to only a couple of picoseconds time measurement range of this system, large timing changes might cause the monitor to fail. To remove any ambiguity and for health status monitoring a high-speed direct-sampling FPGA mezzanine card (FMC) and an analogue RF front-end was added. The circuitry has lower precision than the electro-optical based BAM, but it can determine bunch arrival time with respect to a reference signal over a large time range, i.e. of the order of 1 ms. After restarts or larger energy changes during operation, the electron bunch arrival time may have been changed by tens or even hundreds of picoseconds, which causes that the BAM is out of its operation range and needs to be recalibrated. With the solution developed, the BAM gets the coarse bunch timing from the digitizer and adjusts its optical delay lines accordingly. This allows for finding the operation point fast and automatically. Performance data of the fast direct-sampling digitizer FMC and first measurement data from FLASH will be presented

Prototype of the Improved Electro-Optical Unit for the Bunch Arrival Time Monitors at FLASH and the European XFEL

At today's free-electron lasers, high-resolution electron bunch arrival time measurements have become increasingly more important in fast feedback systems providing accurate timing stability for time-resolved pump-probe experiments and seeding schemes. At FLASH and the upcoming European XFEL a reliable and precise arrival time detection down to the femtosecond level has to cover a broad range of bunch charges, which may even change from 1 nC down to 20 pC within a bunch train. This is fulfilled by arrival time monitors which employ an electro-optical detection scheme by means of synchronised ultra-short laser pulses. At both facilities, the new bunch arrival time monitor has to cope with the special operation mode where the MHz repetition rate bunch train is separated into several segments for different SASE beam lines. Each of the segments will exhibit individual timing jitter characteristics since they are generated from different injector lasers and can be accelerated with individual energy gain settings. In this paper, we describe the recent improvements of the electro-optical unit developed for the bunch arrival time monitors to be installed in both facilities

Femtosecond-precision synchronization of the pump-probe optical laser for user experiments at FLASH

In this paper, we present the long-term stable synchronization of the FLASH pump-probe Ti:sapphire oscillator to an optical reference with sub-10 fs (rms) timing jitter employing a balanced optical cross-correlator. The reference pulse train, transmitted over an actively transit time-stabilized 500m long fiber link, is generated by the FLASH master laser oscillator. This laser also provides the reference for several electron bunch arrival time monitors with sub-10 fs resolution, which in turn enables a longitudinal feedback reducing the electron bunch arrival time jitter to below 25 fs (rms). Combining the precise synchronization of the laser and the longitudinal accelerator feedback enabled a proof-of-principle pump-probe experiment at FLASH, ultimately showing a significant reduction of the timing jitter between the optical laser and the XUV pulses generated by the FEL, compared to the present standard operation. © (2013) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only