Abstract
The physical and technological challenges of FELs become quite demanding with decreasing wavelength, but in recent years X-ray FELs with wavelengths in the Ångstrøm regime (1 Å \(=\) 0.1 nm \(=\,10^{-10}\,\)m) have become a reality with the successful commissioning and operation of the “Linac Coherent Light Source” LCLS [1], the world’s first FEL providing atomic resolution. In this chapter, we discuss the most important aspects and challenges of X-ray FELs and present some of the excellent experimental results achieved at LCLS and the second facility of this kind, the “Spring-8 Angstrom Compact free-electron LAser” SACLA [2]. Low-gain FEL oscillators in the X-ray regime have been proposed [3] but not yet demonstrated, they are not considered here. Comprehensive information and technical details on X-ray FELs are found in the design reports of LCLS [4] and the European XFEL [5]. Further valuable information is presented in a review article by Huang and Kim [6].
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Notes
- 1.
Making the first undulator section longer than the SASE saturation length has a serious disadvantage: the electron bunches acquire a large energy spread in the saturated SASE process which in turn impedes the seeded FEL gain in the second undulator section.
- 2.
Note that the electron transit time has nothing to do with the time duration of the spontaneous radiation pulse which is in \(10\)–\(100\) fs range just like the FEL pulse.
- 3.
The rather tight collimation of the first harmonic of undulator radiation given in Eq. (2.26) is due to the requirement that the angle-dependent wavelength shift stays within the spectral bandwidth observed in forward direction. Dropping this requirement a large amount of radiation is found at substantially larger angles.
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Schmüser, P., Dohlus, M., Rossbach, J., Behrens, C. (2014). X-Ray Free-Electron Lasers: Technical Realization and Experimental Results. In: Free-Electron Lasers in the Ultraviolet and X-Ray Regime. Springer Tracts in Modern Physics, vol 258. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04081-3_9
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