Generating Isolated Terawatt-Attosecond X-ray Pulses via a Chirped Laser Enhanced High-Gain Free-electron Laser

Abstract

A feasible method is proposed to generate isolated attosecond terawatt x-ray radiation pulses in high-gain free-electron lasers. In the proposed scheme, a frequency chirped laser pulse is employed to generate a gradually-varied spacing current enhancement of the electron beam and a series of spatiotemporal shifters are applied between the undulator sections to amplify a chosen ultra-short radiation pulse from self-amplified spontaneous emission. Three-dimensional start-to-end simulations have been carried out and the calculation results demonstrated that 0.15 nm x-ray pulses with peak power over 1TW and duration of several tens of attoseconds could be achieved by using the proposed technique.