Generating intense fully coherent soft x-ray radiation based on a laser-plasma accelerator

Opt Express. 2015 Jun 1;23(11):14993-5002. doi: 10.1364/OE.23.014993.

Abstract

Laser-plasma based accelerator has the potential to dramatically reduce the size and cost of future x-ray light sources to the university-laboratory scale. However, the large energy spread of the laser-plasma accelerated electron beam may hinder the way for short wavelength free-electron laser generation. In this paper, we propose a novel method for directly imprinting strong coherent micro-bunching on the electron beam with large intrinsic energy spread by using a wavefront-tilted conventional optical laser beam and a weak dipole magnet. Theoretical analysis and numerical simulations demonstrate that this technique can be used for the generation of fully coherent femtosecond soft x-ray radiation at gigawatts level with a very short undulator.