Tunable High Spatio-Spectral Purity Undulator Radiation from a Transported Laser Plasma Accelerated Electron Beam

Amin Ghaith ,M Labat,D Dennetière,J Gautier,J Vétéran,F Polack,Alexandre Carcy ,F Marteau,Mathieu Valléau ,Alain Lestrade ,J P Goddet,Charles Kitégi ,F Briquez,C Szwaj,Jean-Pierre Duval ,Patrick Rommeluère ,Amar Tafzi ,Igor Andriyash ,Olivier Marcouillé ,C Bourgoin,S Bielawski,Slava Smartsev ,C Thaury,C Benabderrahmane,Victor Malka ,François Bart ,Oleg Chubar ,Mourad Sebdaoui ,Frédéric Blache ,Christian Herbeaux ,S Sebban,Alexandre Loulergue ,Olena Kononenko ,Driss Oumbarek ,N Leclercq,Moussa El Ajjouri ,Carlos De Oliveira ,S Corde,Yannick Dietrich ,Thomas André ,P Berteaud,Guillaume Lambert ,Keihan Tavakoli ,Nicolas Hubert ,Eléonore Roussel ,Marie-Emmanuelle Couprie

doi:10.1038/s41598-019-55209-4

Abstract

Undulator based synchrotron light sources and Free Electron Lasers (FELs) are valuable modern probes of matter with high temporal and spatial resolution. Laser Plasma Accelerators (LPAs), delivering GeV electron beams in few centimeters, are good candidates for future compact light sources. However the barriers set by the large energy spread, divergence and shot-to-shot fluctuations require a specific transport line, to shape the electron beam phase space for achieving ultrashort undulator synchrotron radiation suitable for users and even for achieving FEL amplification. Proof-of-principle LPA based undulator emission, with strong electron focusing or transport, does not yet exhibit the full specific radiation properties. We report on the generation of undulator radiation with an LPA beam based manipulation in a dedicated transport line with versatile properties. After evidencing the specific spatio-spectral signature, we tune the resonant wavelength within 200–300 nm by modification of the electron beam energy and the undulator field. We achieve a wavelength stability of 2.6%. We demonstrate that we can control the spatio-spectral purity and spectral brightness by reducing the energy range inside the chicane. We have also observed the second harmonic emission of the undulator.

Highlights

Accelerator based light sources[1] have experienced a remarkable increase of brilliance in the X-ray domain these last decades, transforming our understanding of the world using synchrotron light
We have examined the characteristics of Laser Plasma Accelerators (LPAs) generated undulator radiation after a manipulation beam line
We have shown that it can exhibit the distinguished properties currently observed on conventional accelerator light sources, with the particular spatio-spectral dependance leading to a moon-shape pattern

Summary

Introduction

Accelerator based light sources[1] have experienced a remarkable increase of brilliance in the X-ray domain these last decades, transforming our understanding of the world using synchrotron light. Storage ring based facilities predominantly use insertion devices, commonly known as undulators, and benefit from the improvements of the electron beam parameters in particular the energy spread and emittance. They provide high brilliance X-ray radiation that addresses the 21st century societal challenges such as health, environment, energy, information technology and fundamental science. The LPA-based undulator radiation[50,51,52,53] is still limited in terms of performance: large shot-to-shot spectral and intensity fluctuations, wide relative FWHM bandwidths (7.5%50, 16%52, 22%51) resulting mainly from the large energy spread of the electron beam.

Methods

Results

Conclusion