In this paper, we propose a scheme to generate tunable coherent X-ray
radiation for future light source applications. This scheme uses an energy
chirped electron beam, a laser modulator, a laser chirper and two bunch
compressors to generate a prebunched kilo-Ampere current electron beam from a
few tens Ampere electron beam out of a linac. The initial modulation energy
wavelength can be compressed by a factor of 1+hbR56a in phase space,
where hb is the energy bunch length chirp introduced by the laser chirper,
R56a is the momentum compaction factor of the first bunch compressor. As
an illustration, we present an example to generate more than 400 MW, 170
attoseconds pulse, 1 nm coherent X-ray radiation using a 60 Ampere electron
beam out of the linac and 200 nm laser seed. Both the final wavelength and the
radiation pulse length in the proposed scheme are tunable by adjusting the
compression factor and the laser parameters