Normal planar undulators doubling as transverse gradient undulators

Abstract

The transverse gradient undulator (TGU) has important application in the short-wavelength high-gain free electron lasers (FELs) driven by laser-plasma accelerators. However, the usual transversely tapered TGUs need special design and manufacture, and the transverse gradient cannot be tuned arbitrarily. In this paper we explore a new and simple method of using the natural transverse gradient of a normal planar undulator to compensate the beam energy spread effect. In this method, a vertical dispersion on the electron beam is introduced, then the dispersed beam passes through a normal undulator with a vertical off-axis orbit where the vertical field gradient is selected properly related to the dispersion strength and the beam energy spread. Theoretical analysis and numerical simulations for self-amplified spontaneous emission FELs based on laser plasma accelerators are presented, and indicate that this method can greatly reduce the effect of the beam energy spread, leading to a similar enhancement on FEL performance as the usual transversely tapered TGU, but with the advantages of economy, tunable transverse gradient and no demand of extra field for correcting the orbit deflection induced by the field gradient.