MeV electron bunch compression and timing jitter suppression using a THz-driven resonator

Abstract

THz-driven electron bunch compression and manipulation have significantly progressed and shown great potential in recent years. This paper presents a THz-driven resonator capable of bunch compression and timing jitter suppression with the inherent advantages such as field enhancement and laser synchronization. The resonance behavior of the resonator is studied to deduce the expression of the resonance frequency. Using the particle-tracking simulation, we study the performance of the THz-driven resonator in a MeV ultrafast electron diffraction beamline, and conclude that a bunch length (rms) of 15.40 ± 4.86 fs and timing jitter of 10.1 fs (rms) is achievable, which enables a temporal resolution below 25 fs in theory. Moreover, the THz-regime resonating field in the THz resonator allows for direct manipulation of each microbunch of a bunch train with picosecond bunch spacing. Particle-tracking simulation shows that simultaneous multi-bunch compression can be realized with a frequency-customized THz resonator. We expect this novel method to be applied in multi-bunch applications such as the coherent Smith–Purcell radiation.