Proceedings of the 27th International Free Electron Laser Conference

SIMULATIONS, DIAGNOSTICS AND RECENT RESULTS

OF THE VISA II EXPERIMENT
G. Andonian, A. Murokh, C. Pellegrini, S. Reiche, J. Rosenzweig,
G. Travish, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA
M. Babzien, I. Ben-Zvi, V. Litvinenko, V. Yakimenko, BNL, Upton, NY 11973, USA
I. Boscolo, S. Cialdi, A. Flacco, INFN-Milano, Milano, Italy
M. Ferrario, L. Palumbo, C. Vicario, INFN/LNF, Frascati, Roma, Italy
J. Huang, PAL, Pohang, S. Korea

Abstract EXPERIMENT DESCRIPTION

Summary of Prior Results
The VISA II experiment entails the use of a chirped elec-
tron beam to drive a high gain SASE FEL. Sextupoles are The VISA experiment layout is described in detail in
implemented to correct the longitudinal aberrations affect- Ref. [5]. The VISA project succesfully demonstrated satu-
ing the high energy spread chirped beam during transport ration of a SASE FEL within a 4 meter undulator at 840 nm.
to the undulator. The output radiation is diagnosed with An electron bunch compression mechanism, exploiting the
a modified frequency resolved optical gating (FROG) tech- nonlinear properties of transport along the dispersive line
nique. The double differential energy spectrum is measured of the ATF, was discovered to increase the peak current
with a pair of slits and a set of gratings. In this paper, we from 55 A to 240 A. This compression was ultimately re-
report on start-to-end simulations, radiation diagnostics, as sponsible for the observed high gain lasing. Electron beam
well as intial experimental results. Technical considera- dynamics in the gun, transport, and undulator were mod-
tions for future experimental methods are also addressed. eled with the simulation codes PARMELA [6], ELEGANT
[7], and GENESIS 1.3 [8] respectively. SASE FEL proper-
ties, such as pulse energy, profile, and angular distribution
were computed with GENESIS. The harvest of the start-
end suite of codes was accurately benchmarked against ex-
INTRODUCTION perimental findings. The complete characterization of the
SASE FEL properties included gain lengths, spectra, en-
ergies, angular distributions and observation of nonlinear
As the promise of X-ray free electron lasers (FEL)
harmonics [9].
comes close to realization [1, 2], the creation and diagno-
sis of ultra-short pulses is of great relevance to the FEL
community. Femtosecond long, Ångstrom wavelength ra- More Results and Analysis
diation will provide the spatial resolution desired for sci-
Follow-up measurements at VISA took place with the
entific investigations at the time scales of atomic process,
employ of a highly chirped electron pulse, with longitudi-
such as biological sampling (single molecule imaging) [3].
nal compression, and subsequent FEL amplification. An
Such sources are designed to operate at hundred femtosec-
anomolously large bandwidth, up to 15% full width, was
ond pulse lengths with a clear demand, from the scientific
observed at high gain (Fig. 1), accompanied by atypical
community, to push to even shorter time scales.
far-field angular radiation patterns.
A proposal to obtain such ultra-short pulses [4], by ma-
nipulating frequency chirped FEL output, serves as the in- 1200
spiration for the VISA II experiment. In the proposal,
1000
the notion of a two-stage undulator is described. The fre-
Power Spectrum (a.u.)

quency chirped radiation produced from the first undulator 800

is monochromatized and serves as the seed for the second 600
undulator. The aim of the VISA II project is to operate the
400
high gain SASE (Self Amplified Spontaneous Amplifica-
tion) FEL with the largest electron beam chirp allowable 200
at the upgraded systems of the Accelerator Test Facility 0
(ATF) located in Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL). 820 840 860 880 900 920 940 960
The production, and subsequent measurement, of strongly Wavelength (nm)
chirped SASE FEL radiation based on electron beam chirp-
ing is the objective of this multi-institutional collaborative Figure 1: Sample shot of observed SASE FEL spectrum
effort. with anomalously large bandwidth.

21-26 August 2005, Stanford, California, USA 83 JACoW / eConf C0508213

 Proceedings of the 27th International Free Electron Laser Conference

An electron bunch, of approximately 330 pC, with 1.7% spectrometer is calibrated with the spectral lines of a com-
energy spread, was propogated through the undulator. Due mercial Argon lamp. The resultant is a direct study of the
to nonlinear compression, the peak current of the pulse d2 I
intensity of the beam presented in the familiar form, dωdθ y
,
reached 300 A. The compression, as well as the SASE FEL the double differential spectrum.
output, was extremely stable and insensitive to RF and laser Some recent data of this diagnostic is shown in Fig. 3.
timing jitter. Sextupoles were not energized during these This data was retrieved from a preliminary prototype of
runs, thus there was no control of electron beam chirp prior the double differential spectrometer that did not contain fo-
to undulator injection. The average measured SASE radi- cusing lenses; the raw image on the CCD camera had ad-
ated energy was approximately 2 μJ and displayed an ex- equate brightness. The overall parabolic structure of the
traordinary wavelength distribution. The spectrum is no- beam, from red shifting, in (θ, ω) space is evident, with
table for a characteristic double peak structure, accompa- even richer multi-mode patterns also present.
nied by a mean bandwidth value of 12% full width (in ex-
cess of 100 nm), as seen in Fig. 1.
Start-to-end simulations were able to reproduce the
unique features of the radiation and held the key for the
physical understanding behind this previously unobserved
FEL amplification. After transport, the electron beam dis-
played a highly nonlinear longitudinal phase space. More-
over, GENESIS simulations reproduced the large band- Figure 3: The overall parabolic structure (left) is clear in
width and the associated double spiked structure. The sec- the images from the double differential spectrometer; here,
ondary spike was due to the amplification of an off-axis the angle is represented along the horizontal axis and the
mode. The mode was excited by the non-ideal centroid frequency along the vertical. More exotic and richer struc-
and envelope motion of the electron beam through the un- tures have also been observed (right).
dulator’s quadrupole focusing lattice. Mismatches of the
beam’s lasing core to the focusing lattice caused excursions Start-to-end simulations have been carried out to exam-
in beam size near 30 μm in both transverse planes. Addi- ine these results further. The GENESIS post-processing
tional transverse motion causes a red-shift in the radiated unit has been upgraded to compute the double differential
wavelength and an ensuant inclination to ampify the off- spectrum for the experimental parameters at VISA. Prelim-
axis modes [10]. inary runs display the aforementioned parabolic structure
and even some higher order modes are apparent, confirm-
40 ing the dual lasing modes observed in the previous runs
(Fig. 4).
Power Spectrum (a.u.)

30

20

10

0
860 900 940 980
Wavelength (nm)

Figure 2: SASE FEL Power Spectrum obtained from GEN-

ESIS. Key facets of the spectrum, such as the large band-
width and the double hump feature, were reproduced. Figure 4: Output from a GENESIS simulation confirms the
parabolic nature observed in VISA. Angles lie along the
horizontal axis, frequencies along the vertical.
Double Differential Spectrometer
An additional diagnostic has been developed to unfold
the relationship between frequency and angle of the FEL
Far-field Angular Distribution
radiation. This diagnostic employs the use of an adjustible A unique ancillary component of the experiment is the
slit, two cylindrical lenses for focusing, a set of gratings, observed angular distribution profile in the far-field. This
and a CCD (charge coupled device) camera. A slice of the measurement was made by allowing the output radiation
FEL ouput is passed through the slits, then focused onto to propogate, without focusing lenses, to a screen approx-
the gratings (1200 in−1 ). The resulting raw image displays imately 3 m (10 ZR ) away. The patterns observed were
the photon beam with frequency along one axis, and trans- hollow in nature, like previous VISA results, but more pro-
verse angle along the other axis. The double-differential nounced in angle. Spiral shaped patterns accompanied the

JACoW / eConf C0508213 84 21-26 August 2005, Stanford, California, USA

 Proceedings of the 27th International Free Electron Laser Conference

hollow modes. The helicity of this patterns will be studied Modified Frequency Resolved Optical Gating
via a mode converter, described later in this note.
Once electron beam chirp is preserved for injection into
the undulator, and subsequent SASE FEL lasing at high
gain is achieved, the resulting radiation will be frequency
chirped. Measuring the properties of this radiation requires
state-of-the-art diagnostics. A standard method of measur-
ing the structure of short pulse, frequency chirped light
is frequency resolved optical gating (FROG) [12]. This
Figure 5: Far-field angular distribution profiles from VISA method has been used successfully, previously at the Low-
demonstrating the atypical spirality and helicity (A,B) and Energy Undulator Test Line (LEUTL) at the Advanced
superimposed with the red diode alignment laser for refer- Photon Source, to measure both the amplitude and phase
ence (C). of FEL radiation [13]. For the expected parameters of the
VISA II SASE FEL, a modified version of FROG is the
most viable candidate.

MEASUREMENTS AT VISA II One aspect of FROG, or GRENOUILLE [12] (a close

relative of the FROG family of detectors designed to
Chirped Beam Operation simplifiy alignment issues by employing fewer, multi-
purpose optical elements), that is a concern for the pro-
The main goal of the VISA II experiment is to inject posed measurement is the frequency resolution of the spec-
a linearly chirped electron beam into the undulator to pro- trogram. For the radiated profile presented in previous
duce frequency chirped SASE FEL radiation. Although the results and properties studied in GENESIS simulations,
bunch compression mechanism facilitates high-gain las- namely the anomalously large spectral width and the hol-
ing, it restricts the management of beam properties through low mode angular distribution pattern, the FROG technique
transport. Preservation of the electron beam chirp applied requires modification to efficiently serve as a reliable di-
at the linac will be accomplished by the manipulation of agnostic. The proposed modifications revolve around the
nonlinear lonigtudinal compression with the use of sex- GRENOUILLE detector. The GRENOUILLE employs the
tupole magnets placed at points of high horizontal disper- use of a thick crystal which has the dual purpose of recom-
sion. The sextupoles will mitigate second order effects, bining the incoming and the delayed signal and dispersing
particularly by diminshing the T566 element of the trans- of the split signal. However, for our purposes, this system
port matrix, to a negligible value [11]. Currently there are is too constrained by the doubling crystal to properly re-
three sextupoles installed along the dispersive line at the solve the radiation expected from the VISA II FEL. The
ATF to serve th is purpose. thick lens must be replaced by a thin lens to increase the
Measuring the T566 term directly presents a challenge as resolution; a dedicated spectrometer must be added to com-
compression is required for high gain lasing in VISA II. pensate for the loss of functionality that comes with the re-
The actual value that can be quantified is the T166 element. placed lens. In addition, a larger (several megapixel) CCD
This value is measured by comparing the effect of incre- must replace the camera that is used in the commercial ver-
mental changes in the magnetic fields of all magneto-optic sion of this diagnostic. The camera must be able to cover a
elements along the beamline to the change in position of large range of wavelenghts to resolve the wide bandwidths
the electron beam centroid at a point of non-zero disper- observed previously.
sion. The correlation between the T166 and T566 terms is
used to quantify the effects of the sextupoles. Simulations concerning the feasibility of this measure-
ment have been conducted. GENESIS outputs for the
chirped beam case show a clear effect for idealized beam
shapes. These results have been analyzed for varying de-
grees of chirp. Indeed, the inversion algorithm is robust
enough to handle other exotic shapes and patterns which
have been simulated and reconstructed via the commercial
FROG software (Femtosoft) for the VISA II experiment.
Figure 7 shows an example of a spectrogram obtained from
GENESIS for the running conditions of the VISA II FEL.
Figure 6: Two transverse profiles of the electron beam in This structure shows the complex nature of the FEL pulse,
the dispersive section of the transport with sextupole mag- which is expected to contain several spikes. Indeed, this
nets energized. To create such extreme beam profiles the longitudinal pulse profile was retrieved when the spectro-
settings of the sextupoles were exaggerated from the de- gram was analyzed with the FROG reconstruction algo-
sign values computed using simulations. rithm.

21-26 August 2005, Stanford, California, USA 85 JACoW / eConf C0508213

 Proceedings of the 27th International Free Electron Laser Conference

[4] C. Schroeder et al., J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 19, 1782 (2002)

[5] A. Murokh et al., Phys. Rev. E 67, 066501 (2003)
[6] L.M. Young, J.H. Billen, Los Alamos National Laboratory
Report No. LA-UR-96-1835 (rev. 2000)
[7] M. Borland, Advanced Photon Source LS-287 (2000)
[8] S. Reiche, Nucl. Instrum. Methods A 429, 243 (1999)
[9] A. Tremaine et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 88, 204801 (2002)
[10] G. Andonian et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 95, 054801 (2005)
[11] J. England et al., Phys. Rev. ST Accel. Beams 8, 012801
(2005)
[12] R. Trebino, Frequency Resolved Optical Gating, Kluwer
Academic Publishers (2000)
[13] Y. Li et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 89, 234801 (2002)
[14] M.W. Beijersbergen et al., Optics Comm. 96, 123-132
Figure 7: Spectrogram (with frequency along the vertical (1993)
axis and time delay along the horizontal) of the expected
[15] S. Reiche et al., Procedings of the 2004 FEL Conference,
radiation from the VISA II experiment. Further processing
193-196, Trieste, Italy.
of this spectrogram has yielded the longitudinal profile of
the pulse used in simulations.

Mode Converter and Polarizer

The investigation of hollow mode and spiral shaped far-
field angular radiation patterns at VISA continues via a di-
agnostic mode converter. The mode converter is designed
to transform light with planar polarization to circular polar-
ization, and vice versa; the transfer of orbital angular mo-
mentum is the observable [14]. The π/2 mode converter is
constructed
√ of two cyldrical lenses, separated by a distance
of d = 2f , and the resultant light will have distinct ob-
servable properties. This data will hopefully yield insight
into the underpinnings of the unusual angular distribution
patterns observed at VISA.
The VISA project will also examine the study of Co-
herent Transistion Undulator Radiation (CTUR) [15], the
radiation emitted by the electron bunch as it passes through
the entrance and exit of the undulator, due to its change in
longitudinal velocity. In fact, this radiation is thought to
be radially polarized, describing yet another possible ex-
planation for the helicity of the observed far-field patterns
from the planar undulator at VISA. The quantization of this
effect requires minimal alteration of already existing diag-
nostics with the addition of grid polarizers to determine the
polarization of the radiation.
This work supported by Dept. of Energy Contract no.
DE-FG-98ER45693, and Office of Naval Research no.
N000140210911

REFERENCES
[1] M. Cornacchia et al., Linac Coherent Light Source Design
Study Report no. SLAC-521 (1998)
[2] TESLA-FEL, Deutsches Elektronen Synchrotron 2001-05
(2001)
[3] R. Neutze et al., Nature 406, 752 (2000)

JACoW / eConf C0508213 86 21-26 August 2005, Stanford, California, USA