Physical Review Research (Aug 2023)

GdBCO bulk superconducting helical undulator for x-ray free-electron lasers

  • Marco Calvi,
  • Sebastian Hellmann,
  • Eduard Prat,
  • Thomas Schmidt,
  • Kai Zhang,
  • Anthony R. Dennis,
  • John H. Durrell,
  • Mark D. Ainslie

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.5.L032020
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 5, no. 3
p. L032020

Abstract

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We report on the performance of a new type of helical undulator based on bulk single-grain GdBa_{2}Cu_{3}O_{7−δ} high-temperature superconductors. The 104-mm-long prototype with a period length of 16 mm and a magnetic aperture of 4 mm achieves an on-axis field above 2.5 T at a temperature of 10 K. This undulator technology has the potential to change the design parameters of future x-ray free-electron lasers, making them more compact and powerful.