Soft x-ray femtosecond coherent undulator radiation in a storage ring

Abstract

We propose to produce femtosecond pulses of soft x-ray coherent undulator radiation in a storage ring for user pump–probe experiments using two energy exchanges between a picosecond relativistic electron bunch and two external ultra-short laser pulses. The coherent emission is generated thanks to the two laser–electron interactions that modulate the longitudinal charge distribution of the electron bunch at a harmonic of the laser wavelength, such as in the echo-enabled harmonic generation in free-electron lasers. Application to the SOLEIL storage ring in the soft x-ray range leads to coherent radiation and improvement of the flux of the photons by several orders in magnitude compared to the conventional slicing scheme. This is also accompanied by a significant enhancement of the signal-to-noise ratio.