Modified reverse tapering method to prevent frequency shift of the radiation in the planar undulator

Abstract

This paper presents a modified reverse tapering method to generate a polarized soft x ray in x-ray free-electron lasers (XFELs) with a higher photon power and a shorter undulator length than the simple linear reverse tapering method. In the proposed method, a few untapered planar undulators are added before the simple linear reverse tapering section of the undulator line. This simple modification prevents the frequency shift of the radiation that occurs when the simple linear reverse tapering method is applied to planar undulators. In the proposed method, the total length of planar undulators decreased in spite of the additional untapered undulators. When the modified reverse tapering method is used with four untapered planar undulators, the total length of the planar undulators is 64.6 m. On the other hand, the required length of the planar undulators is 94.6 m when the simple linear reverse tapering method is used. The proposed method gives us a way to generate a soft x-ray pulse (1.24 keV) with a high degree of polarization (>0.99) and radiation power (>30 GW) at the new undulator line with a 10-GeV electron beam in the Pohang Accelerator Laboratory X-ray Free-Electron Laser. This method can be applied in the existing XFELs in the world without any change in the undulator lines.