Two-color operation of a free-electron laser with a tilted beam

With the successful operation of free-electron lasers (FELs) as user facilities there has been a growing demand for experiments with two photon pulses with variable photon energy and time separation. A configuration of an undulator with variable-gap control and a delaying chicane in the middle of the beamline is proposed. An injected electron beam with a transverse tilt will only yield FEL radiation for the parts which are close to the undulator axis. This allows, after re-aligning and delaying the electron beam, a different part of the bunch to be used to produce a second FEL pulse. This method offers independent control in photon energy and delay. For the parameters of the soft X-ray beamline Athos at the SwissFEL facility the photon energy tuning range is a factor of five with an adjustable delay between the two pulses from -50 to 950 fs.