Measurements and simulations of ultralow emittance and ultrashort electron beams in the linac coherent light source

The Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) is an x-ray free-electron laser project presently in a commissioning phase at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. We report here on very low-emittance measurements made at low bunch charge, and a few femtosecond bunch length produced by the LCLS bunch compressors. Start-to-end simulations associated with these beam parameters show the possibilities of generating hundreds of GW at 1.5 A x-ray wavelength and nearly a single longitudinally coherent spike at 1.5 nm with 2-fs duration.