Ultrashort electron bunch length measurements at DUVFEL

Abstract

The DUVFEL electron linac is designed to produce sub-picosecond, high brightness electron bunches for driving a short wavelength FEL. Four experiments have been commissioned to address the challenge of accurately measuring bunch lengths on this timescale. In the frequency domain, a short 12 period undulator is used to produce both off-axis coherent emission and on-axis incoherent single-shot spectra. The total coherent infrared power scales inversely with the bunch length and the spectral cutoff is an indication of bunch length. The density of the power spikes in the single-shot visible spectrum may also be used to estimate the bunch length. In the time domain, the linac accelerating sections and a bending magnet are used to implement the RF-zero phasing method, and a subpicosecond streak camera is also installed. The beam measurements with comparisons of these methods are reported.