Short period, high field cryogenic undulator for extreme performance x-ray free electron lasers

Abstract

Short period, high field undulators can enable short wavelength free electron lasers (FELs) at low beam energy, with decreased gain length, thus allowing much more compact and less costly FEL systems. We describe an ongoing initiative to develop such an undulator based on an approach that utilizes novel cryogenic materials. While this effort was begun in the context of extending the photon energy regime of a laser-plasma accelerator based electron source, we consider here implications of its application to sub-fs scenarios in which more conventional injectors are employed. The use of such low-charge, ultrashort beams, which has recently been proposed as a method of obtaining single-spike performance in x-ray FELs, is seen in simulation to give unprecedented beam brightness. This brightness, when considered in tandem with short wavelength, high field undulators, enables extremely high performance FELs. Two examples discussed in this paper illustrate this point well. The first is the use of the SPARX injector at 2.1 GeV with 1 pC of charge to give 8 GW peak power in a single spike at 6.5 Å with a photon beam peak brightness greater than 10^{35} photons/(s mm^{2} mrad^{2} 0.1% BW), which will also reach LCLS wavelengths on the 5th harmonic. The second is the exploitation of the LCLS injector with 0.25 pC, 150 as pulses to lase at 1.5 Å using only 4.5 GeV energy; beyond this possibility, we present start-to-end simulations of lasing at unprecedented short wavelength, 0.15 Å, using 13.65 GeV LCLS design energy.