Generation of isolated single attosecond hard X-ray pulse in enhanced self-amplified spontaneous emission scheme

Toward the Generation of an Isolated TW-Attosecond X-ray Pulse in XFEL

The isolated terawatt (TW) attosecond (as) hard X-ray pulse will expand the scope of ultrafast science, including the examination of phenomena that have not been studied before, such as the dynamics of electron clouds in atoms, single-molecule imaging, and examining the dynamics of hollow atoms. Therefore, several schemes for the generation of an isolated TW-as X-ray pulse in X-ray free electron laser (XFEL) facilities have been proposed with the manipulation of electron properties such as emittance or current. In a multi-spike scheme, a series of current spikes were employed to amplify the X-ray pulse. A single-spike scheme in which a TW-as X-ray pulse can be generated by a single current spike was investigated for ideal parameters for the XFEL machine. This paper reviews the proposed schemes and assesses the feasibility of each scheme.

Isolated terawatt attosecond hard X-ray pulse generated from single current spike

Isolated terawatt (TW) attosecond (as) hard X-ray pulse is greatly desired for four-dimensional investigations of natural phenomena with picometer spatial and attosecond temporal resolutions. Since the demand for such sources is continuously increasing, the possibility of generating such pulse by a single current spike without the use of optical or electron delay units in an undulator line is addressed. The conditions of a current spike (width and height) and a modulation laser pulse (wavelength and power) is also discussed. We demonstrate that an isolated TW-level as a hard X-ray can be produced by a properly chosen single current spike in an electron bunch with simulation results. By using realistic specifications of an electron bunch of the Pohang Accelerator Laboratory X-ray Free-Electron Laser (PAL-XFEL), we show that an isolated, >1.0 TW and ~36 as X-ray pulse at 12.4 keV can be generated in an optimized-tapered undulator line. This result opens a new vista for current XFEL operation: the attosecond XFEL.

Temporally-coherent terawatt attosecond XFEL synchronized with a few cycle laser

Attosecond metrology using laser-based high-order harmonics has been significantly advanced and applied to various studies of electron dynamics in atoms, molecules and solids. Laser-based high-order harmonics have a limitation of low power and photon energies. There is, however, a great demand for even higher power and photon energy. Here, we propose a scheme for a terawatt attosecond (TW-as) X-ray pulse in X-ray free-electron laser controlled by a few cycle IR pulse, where one dominant current spike in an electron bunch is used repeatedly to amplify a seeded radiation to a terawatt level. This scheme is relatively simple, compact, straightforward, and also produces a temporally and spectrally clean pulse. The viability of this scheme is demonstrated in simulations using Pohang accelerator laboratory (PAL)-XFEL beam parameters.

Tailoring the amplification of attosecond pulse through detuned X-ray FEL undulator

We demonstrate that the amplification of attosecond pulse in X-ray free electron laser (FEL) undulator can be tailored. The characteristic of the amplification of an isolated attosecond pulse in the FEL undulator is investigated. An isolated 180 attoseconds full width half maximum (FWHM) pulse at 1.25 nm with a spectral bandwidth of 1% is injected into an undulator. The simulation results show that for a direct seeding of 3MW, the seed is amplified to the peak power of 106 GW (40 μJ, an output pulse-width of 383 attoseconds) in the presence of a detuning at FEL resonance condition in 100-m long undulator. We note that the introduction of detuning leads to the better performance compared to the case without detuning: shorter by 15.5% in a pulse-width and higher by 76.6% in an output power. Tapering yields a higher power (116% increases in the output power compared to the case without detuning) but a longer pulse (15.4% longer in the pulse-width). It was observed that ± Δλ(r)/8 (Δλ(r)/λ(r) ~1%) is the maximum degree of detuning, beyond which the amplification becomes poor: lower in the output power and longer in the pulse duration. The minimum power for a seed pulse needs to be higher than 1 MW for the successful amplification of an attosecond pulse at 1.25 nm. Also, the electron beam energy-spread must be less than 0.1% for a suitable propagation of attosecond pulse along the FEL undulator under this study.