Energy recovery linac based fully coherent light source

Area of Science:

• Accelerator Physics
• Quantum Optics
• Materials Science

Background:

• Energy recovery linacs (ERLs) are crucial for high-brightness electron beams.
• Current ERL applications in free-electron lasers are limited by low peak currents.
• Angular-dispersion induced microbunching is a novel technique for enhancing beam properties.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the combination of ERLs and angular-dispersion induced microbunching.
• To generate fully coherent radiation pulses with high average brightness and tunable pulse length.
• To assess the feasibility of producing coherent EUV radiation.

Main Methods:

• Start-to-end simulations were performed on a 600 MeV low-energy ERL.
• The angular-dispersion induced microbunching technique was integrated with the ERL.
• Simulations focused on generating coherent EUV radiation pulses.

Main Results:

• Achieved average brightness exceeding 10^25 ph/s/mm^2/mrad^2/0.1%BW.
• Generated average power of approximately 100 W at 13.5 nm.
• Obtained average power of 20 W with a spectral resolution of 0.5 meV.

Conclusions:

• The proposed technique effectively overcomes the low peak current limitation in ERL-driven free-electron lasers.
• The method enables the generation of high-quality, coherent EUV radiation.
• Further extensions to shorter wavelengths using ERL complexes are feasible.