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

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

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

Femtosecond Timing Distribution at the European XFEL

Accurate timing synchronization on the femtosecond timescale is an essential installation for time-resolved experiments at free-electron lasers (FELs) such as FLASH and the upcoming European XFEL. To date the required precision levels can only be achieved by a laser-based synchronization system. Such a system has been successfully deployed at FLASH and is based on the distribution of femtosecond laser pulses over actively stabilized optical fibers. For time-resolved experiments and for special diagnostics it is crucial to synchronize various laser systems to the electron beam with a long-term stability of better than 10 fs. The upcoming European XFEL has raised the demands due to its large number of stabilized optical fibers and a length of 3400 m. Specifically the increased lengths for the stabilized fibers had necessitated major advancement in precision to achieve the requirement of less than 10 fs precision. This extensive rework of the active fiber stabilization has led to a system exceeding the current existing requirements and is even prepared for increasing demands in the future. This paper reports on the laser-based synchronization system focusing on the active fiber stabilization for the European XFEL, discusses major complications, their solutions and the most recent performance results

The Bunch Arrival Time Monitor at FLASH and European XFEL

In modern free electron laser facilities like FLASH I/II and European XFEL at DESY a high resolution intra bunch train arrival time measurement is mandatory, providing a crucial information for the beam based feedback system. For this purpose a Bunch Arrival Time Monitor (BAM) was developed, based on an electro-optical scheme where an ultra-short pulsed laser is employed. A BAM is composed of several subsystems, including stepper motors, power management, dedicated readout board, management board for voltage settings, temperature sensors and temperature controller and optical amplifier. Part of the electronics is developed using the MicroTCA standard. We will present in this poster the basic requirements for the BAM, software design and implementation developed to manage the subsystems and their interactions