Circular polarization control for the European XFEL in the soft X-ray regime

TL;DR

This paper proposes a method to generate highly circularly polarized soft X-ray radiation at the European XFEL by adding an APPLE II undulator and spatial filtering to suppress background radiation, enabling polarization control without disrupting baseline operations.

Contribution

The study introduces a practical scheme combining an APPLE II undulator with spatial filtering and a chicane to produce circularly polarized soft X-rays at XFELs, preserving baseline beam quality.

Findings

Achieved 100 GW level coherent radiation in the helical radiator.

Effective background suppression through spatial filtering with slits.

Preserved electron microbunching and beam quality through the setup.

Abstract

The possibility of producing highly circularly polarized X-ray radiation, especially in the soft X-ray region, is an important asset at XFELs. However, the baseline of the European XFEL, including the soft X-ray SASE3 line, foresees planar undulators only. The lowest-risk strategy for implementing polarization control at SASE3 involves adding an APPLE II-type undulator at the end of the planar undulator, to exploit the microbunching from the baseline FEL. 5m-long APPLE II undulators are standard devices at synchrotrons. However, the choice of a short helical radiator leads to the problem of background suppression. The driving idea of our proposal is that the background radiation can be suppressed by spatial filtering. Slits can be inserted behind the APPLE II radiator, where the linearly-polarized radiation spot size is about 30 times larger than the radiation spot size from the helical radiator. The last 7 cells of the SASE3 undulator are left with an open gap in order to provide a total 42 m drift section for electron beam and radiation. The linearly-polarized radiation spot size increases along the drift, and the linearly polarized background radiation can be suppressed by the slits. At the same time, the microbunch structure is preserved. 100GW level coherent radiation is emitted in the helical radiator. The filtering setup consists of a pair of water cooled slits for X-ray beam filtering and of a 5m-long magnetic chicane, creating an offset for slit installation immediately behind the helical radiator. Electrons and X-rays are separated before the slits by the chicane, and the electron beam can pass by the filtering setup without perturbations. Based on start-to-end simulations we present calculations from the SASE3 undulator entrance up to the radiator exit including the modulated electron beam transport by the FODO focusing system in the low charge (20pC) mode of operation.