Generation of Ultrashort and Coherent Synchrotron Radiation Pulses at DELTA

Abstract

Pump-probe experiments to study ultrafast dynamic phenomena such as electron transfer, lattice vibrations, phase transitions, chemical reactions, or spin dynamics require two short radiation pulses as well as good control of the time delay between them. The first pulse to excite (“pump”) the sample under study is usually a femtosecond laser pulse in the near-visible regime. For the second pulse to analyze (“probe”) the state of the sample as a function of the delay, however, light with shorter and tunable wavelength would be desirable. Conventional synchrotron light sources produce pulses with a typical duration of 30–100 ps (FWHM), given by the electron bunch length in a storage ring, which is not well suited for ultrafast studies. The bunch length can be reduced to a few picoseconds in the so-called low-α mode (e.g., [1]) by lowering the momentum compaction factor α of the storage ring. Radiation pulses in the femtosecond range, however, are obtained more easily by extracting synchrotron light from a small fraction of the electron distribution, rather than the whole bunch, which can be achieved with the laser-based methods described below.