Brightness of Synchrotron radiation from Undulators and Bending Magnets

TL;DR

This paper explores a phase space-based definition of synchrotron radiation brightness, compares exact and approximate calculations, and extends the formalism to bending magnets, revealing inconsistencies in common approximations.

Contribution

It introduces a phase space-based brightness measure, provides explicit calculations for undulators and bending magnets, and identifies discrepancies in existing approximation methods.

Findings

Exact calculations differ significantly from common approximations in intermediate regimes.

The phase space approach yields a consistent brightness definition across different regimes.

Existing bending magnet brightness approximations are parametrically inconsistent.

Abstract

We consider the maximum of the Wigner distribution (WD) of synchrotron radiation (SR) fields as a possible definition of SR source brightness. Such figure of merit was originally introduced in the SR community by Kim. The brightness defined in this way is always positive and, in the geometrical optics limit, can be interpreted as maximum density of photon flux in phase space. For undulator and bending magnet radiation from a single electron, the WD function can be explicitly calculated. In the case of an electron beam with a finite emittance the brightness is given by the maximum of the convolution of a single electron WD function and the probability distribution of the electrons in phase space. In the particular case when both electron beam size and electron beam divergence dominate over the diffraction size and the diffraction angle, one can use a geometrical optics approach. However, there are intermediate regimes when only the electron beam size or the electron beam divergence dominate. In this asymptotic cases the geometrical optics approach is still applicable, and the brightness definition used here yields back once more the maximum photon flux density in phase space. In these intermediate regimes we find a significant numerical disagreement between exact calculations and the approximation for undulator brightness currently used in literature. We extend the WD formalism to a satisfactory theory for the brightness of a bending magnet. We find that in the intermediate regimes the usually accepted approximation for bending magnet brightness turns out to be inconsistent even parametrically.