The Role of Laser Shaping in Microbunching Instability Suppression and Seeded X-ray Free Electron Emission

Microbunching instability (MBI) driven by collective effects in an accelerator is known to be detrimental for the performance of X-ray free electron lasers. At the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS), laser heater (LH) system was installed to suppress the microbunching instability by inducing a small amount of slice energy spread to the electron beam. The distribution of the induced energy spread greatly effects MBI suppression and can be controlled by shaping the transverse profile of the heater laser. In this paper, we present theoretical and experimental results on utilizing a Laguerre-Gaussian 01 Mode (LG01) laser at LCLS to obtain better suppression of the instability. We demonstrate experimentally that Gaussian-shaped energy distribution is induced by LG01 mode LH and final microbunching gain is better suppressed. We finally discuss the role of LH spatial shaping in soft X-ray self-seeded (SXRSS) FEL emission and demonstrate that this LH configuration is capable of generating high spectral brightness FEL pulses.
Proceedings of the North American Particle Accelerator Conference, NAPAC2019, Lansing, MI, USA