Generation of a Self-Chirped Few-Cycle Optical Pulse in a FEL Oscillator

Abstract

We study the generation of a self-chirped optical pulse in a free-electron laser (FEL) oscillator. In a high-gain FEL oscillator, the frequency chirp is induced in the slippage region as a result of superradiant FEL resonance, and this time-frequency correlation evolves continuously into a few-cycle regime, if the optical cavity length is perfectly synchronized to the electron bunch interval. Numerical simulations based on the slowly evolving wave approximation and experimental results are presented.