Robustness of a plasma acceleration based free electron laser

• Published in: Physical review. Accelerators and beams Vol. 21; no. 11; p. 114802
• Main Authors: Labat, M., Loulergue, A., Andre, T., Andriyash, I. A., Ghaith, A., Khojoyan, M., Marteau, F., Valléau, M., Briquez, F., Benabderrahmane, C., Marcouillé, O., Evain, C., Couprie, M. E.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: College Park American Physical Society 01-11-2018
• Subjects: Emittance; Free electron lasers; Laser plasmas; Parameter sensitivity; Plasma acceleration; Plasma accelerators; Robustness; Transfer lines
• ISSN: 2469-9888; 2469-9888
• DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevAccelBeams.21.114802

Laser plasma accelerators (LPA) can sustainGeV/maccelerating fields offering outstanding new possibilities for compact applications. The LPA beam brightness can now be comparable to radio-frequency accelerators’ (RFA), thanks essentially to the beams short duration (<3fs) and low emittance (as small as 0.1 micron). Still, the mrad level divergence and few percent level energy spread, remain limiting parameters in the cases of demanding applications such as free electron lasers (FELs). Several concepts of transfer line were proposed to mitigate those intrinsic properties targeting undulator radiation applications. We study here the robustness of the chromatic matching strategy for FEL amplification at 200 nm in a dedicated transport line, and analyze its sensitivity to several parameters. We consider not only the possible LPA source jitters, but also various realistic defaults of the equipment such as magnetic elements misalignments or focussing strength errors, imperfect undulator fields, etc.